Page 4085 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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now our unemployment rate is no longer the lowest in the nation. Our retail trade has slipped behind the rest of the country and residential building approvals have fallen. The impact of the coalition’s cuts and the hit to activity and confidence is abundantly clear. It is important to note that the impact of the election of the Abbott government on our city is far more than just the dollar value of those cuts. As well as the human toll on the people who are made redundant or who face the threat of being made redundant, there is a hit to confidence. If households are fearful for the future, that limits their consumption which, in turn, hits spending and activity amongst our local businesses. Combined with the Liberal cuts, the impact on the territory economy is clear.
This is not just about loyal professionals in the public service losing their jobs; it is about the plumbers, hairdressers, mechanics, cafe owners and other small businesses that rely on their custom. If the Liberals truly are the party of small business as they claim, why do they keep on sacking their customers? As I have said before in this place, the Liberals are the party of recession in Canberra. This city always performs better under Labor governments. Amid the pain caused by the Abbott Liberal government’s cuts and the lies and the deceit—remember, no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension and no cuts to the ABC and SBS that we are seeing writ large now in our local community—this Labor government is getting on with the job of implementing our priorities, the right priorities for this city.
These priorities will impact upon our budget. All decisions do, but we are committed to making the right decisions and the tough decisions at this point in time. Let me be clear: this government will continue to fund our health system, with $1.4 billion this year. There is more investment to come, including $350 million in new initiatives over the next four years. We are keeping our commitment to deliver a world-class system, including this year meeting the shortfall in health funding caused by the coalition’s harsh budget cuts. Remember the promise? No cuts to health or education. The reality is that the Abbot Liberal government, cheered on by the Canberra Liberals, has hacked into the health budget of this city.
We will continue to fund our world-class education system with $1.1 billion this year in education and training, and there is more investment to come. We are setting aside funds from our asset sales and from our forward capital program for public transport improvements. The 2014-15 budget included a provision to pay for light rail. We will not pay for that build until the service is operational, running down Flemington Road and Northbourne Avenue, and that will be in the 2019-20 fiscal year. We will pay to resolve the Mr Fluffy legacy, with minimal help, I might say, from the federal Liberal government. That cost will hit the territory budget and it will hit it most in the next two years. But because we are delivering capital metro through a public-private partnership, because of the way we will structure that procurement, we will not start paying for light rail for five years. The bulk of the cost of asbestos remediation will come in the next two years. The outgoing for these two priorities will be many fiscal years apart.
Resolving the Mr Fluffy legacy will pose a considerable cost to the territory government. As we have outlined in the discussion so far, our anticipation of the minimum cost to the ACT budget over the life of the scheme will be in the order of
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