Page 137 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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It was intriguing to hear Dr Bourke blame it all on the Liberal Party, but this is the problem. Those opposite will never acknowledge the faults of federal Labor, and the root of our current problem is federal Labor’s mismanagement of the budget. Yes, it has been exacerbated by the additional job cuts that the coalition put in place, but this is what happens when you do not stand up for your territory, as the Liberals always have, against whoever is in office federally. We stand up for jobs in this territory.
This is what happens when you do not genuinely diversify your economy. This is what happens when you suddenly find the word “diversify” just before the election in 2012 and put it in a document, a document that renames, rebrands, relaunches to make up for the disastrous 2006 budget where this government abandoned the business community of the ACT.
It is also what happens when, beyond the public service, you are totally reliant on land, a land-based economy and a land-based budget. “How can I sell another block of land? How can we get more land into the market so that we can balance the budget?” Instead of taking the long-term view and actually having a long-term plan about what is the best use of and the best return over time on blocks of land so that all benefit over the years, this is what happens when you are reliant on land and you get the double whammy of public service cuts and reduced demand for land.
What we have is the Treasurer looking and sounding more and more like Wayne Swan. He has got his own version of the mining tax as well, and we know that is called the lease variation charge. We will get the update on the lease variation charge, I think it is tomorrow afternoon, when the quarterly financial reports are delivered. But the lease variation charge has never delivered the revenue that it said it would, never even got close, because it is a dud tax. At the same time, it limits urban renewal.
Here we are, we are down to renewal now, and the Chief Minister used the word “renewal” what, 18 times in his speech yesterday? But if you genuinely want urban renewal, why would you put a brake on it using a tax like the lease variation charge? We all know that most of the projects are finished, and there are not too many cranes left on the skyline in Civic. Most of those projects were projects that were approved before the changes that saw the lease variation charge brought in and, having spoken to the developers, most of those projects would not have gone ahead had they been subject to the lease variation regime. And that is the problem.
All we have got from this government is words. All we have got is a government that has had a lot of luck in terms of revenue that flowed in from things like the GST and the property boom, but the people of the ACT are out of luck because this government has not provided for the future. We know that, as I have said, the surpluses always just seem to be that extra year away. “They are coming.”
Yesterday he was looking and sounding more and more like Wayne Swan. We had all the platitudes yesterday. We had all the platitudes that said, “We are the Labor government and we include everybody.” Yes, you do, and everyone is being let down by this approach. That is why we are calling on the government to detail the real impacts of the budget review on the ACT economy.
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