Page 1877 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014

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that prepared for the downturn, even though their last five budget documents have said consistently that the greatest threat to the ACT economy and the ACT budget is a downturn in government spending. This is a government, and particularly a Treasurer, that have had their blinkers on and their hands over their ears, going “La, la, la, la, la.”

The Treasurer has spun the infrastructure projects as job creation initiatives to pick up the slack from the federal government job cuts. Is he seriously proposing that commonwealth public servants be used to build this government’s legacy infrastructure projects? Is this budget chairman Barr’s plan for his great leap forward?

There is a very glaring fallacy here. The government has planned for big capital projects but has not made provision for workforce capacity to accommodate capital spending requirements. I think we all know this will come from interstate. This is definitely not a budget for getting on with it.

In fact they talked the talk during the course of the budget week. They are definitely spending, and Canberrans are definitely paying, but for what? At this stage I do not think we really know. This is what they thought about their own infrastructure growth. This is from the budget papers:

The higher borrowings in the forward years are partly due to the future works provision for capital projects, which has been increased to account for some high value projects for which budgets are either yet to be settled or are commercially sensitive.

This is a government that is getting on with the job, members. Let me say that again:

Of course, unless it is capital metro, when we know no price is too much. So after millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds have been spent on reports, studies and plans, this government still do not know what it wants to build, when or how much it will cost. But they are increasing the territory debt all the same. Cut through the government spin, and in effect they are asking for a blank cheque budget, and Mr Rattenbury is willing to oblige them.

The last time we saw this government hide behind commercial-in-confidence on capital works projects, we had the huge blowouts at the Cotter Dam. Of course the last time the government worked out a budget and disclosed their costings, they then foolishly decided to look for private sector partners after having flagged the costs.

On the Australia forum project, the Chief Minister quite unequivocally stated last month:

We have not taken ownership of the project. Nor do I believe we should.

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