Page 2751 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 September 2014
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the community about what those priorities are. We are being clear that there is a new call on the budget that we had not foreseen, and that it will require some reprioritisation across our existing infrastructure plans in order to meet it. Again, I have not heard a strong response that it is not fair or that it is not what the broader community expects us to be doing in relation to these homes.
I will start with health spending, because health is number one. It has always been number one. In terms of recurrent expenditure, every year the ACT community funds a health system with a recurrent budget of $1.3 billion. That forms the largest single component of ACT government expenditure. We have invested in the last six years a total of $878 million. It is the territory’s largest infrastructure project. I hear others talking about capital metro being the largest infrastructure project. The health infrastructure project is larger and will be much larger than any of the investments we make in public transport.
Mr Hanson: That is a series of projects.
MS GALLAGHER: The health infrastructure program, Mr Hanson, whether you like it or not, is about preparing health infrastructure across the system, across the city, for the entire community.
In relation to education, again, we have a very strong record in making the tough decisions to ensure the sustainability of our public education system and the quality of our public education system, and ensuring that we are making responsible and affordable investments in our school infrastructure. It is hard, as your schools age, and as the number of assets on your capital register increase, to continue to make the required investments over time. But we know that over the last 10 budgets around $900 million has been spent on school infrastructure.
Some of that, I think about $150 million of that, would have been part of building the education revolution. This has allowed investment going into early childhood schools, it has allowed investment going into new schools and it has allowed investment going into existing schools—schools that need upgrades, the work that needs to be done. And the results speak for themselves, in that we are seeing increased enrolments across the public education system, which is great. That is something we set out to achieve when we took those tough decisions that those opposite campaigned strongly against. And we are seeing what we said would happen, in that we are seeing enrolment return to the public system. Now we have to ensure that we can deal with that change, and make sure that all of the public school infrastructure is appropriate.
When problems have arisen—and Mount Taylor is an example there—the government has responded with resources to ensure that kids going to those schools are prioritised, within a tight envelope, to make sure that they are not disadvantaged and have access to top-quality school infrastructure.
In addition to health, education and asbestos, we are making additional investments in public transport, just like every other government around the country is doing. This is not a new area of government spending. Capital metro is about backing public transport. It is also about backing infrastructure investment in Canberra. It is about
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