Page 1921 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 June 2015
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won’t be 10 per cent this year.” No, it is nine per cent. Yes, you are right: nine is not 10 per cent, but there will be years of 10 per cent increases and further increases in the outyears. People see their rates bills every quarter and they ask what they are getting for them.
We see the cuts to the first home owners grant. A government that talks about housing affordability and getting people into their own houses is now going to cut the grant from $12,500 to $10,000 to $7,000. If you paid the extra rates and you thought, “That’ll be okay because there is the first home owners grant to help the kids into their own home,” that has gone too.
What have we got? We have got debt and we have got deficits. It is quite funny; there are standard pages in the budget I always go through, and one of them is the chapter on debt and borrowings. The debt is going up. It apparently dips in the 2018-19 year, but we will see whether that holds. We will see what happens, because I suspect that might be the year in which $375 million has to be found. But there has always been a little chart in that chapter which shows the debt as a graphic. Guess what? The little chart is gone. That is economic reform for you: “We’ll just take the chart out which so starkly shows what the debt is doing. We’ll get rid of it.”
There is a table worth looking at—table 8.3.3 on page 265. Because of their debt, because of their deficits, we are paying a lot more interest. In the government total borrowings, the expense on interest for 2014-15 is $157 million; in 2015-16, the coming year, the interest is $200 million; in 2016-17 the estimate is $217 million; in 2017-18 it is $233 million; and in 2018-19 it dips slightly to $231 million. But we will see what happens there, because there is no way these people can wean themselves off their debt. In the next four years there is $880-odd million worth of interest that is being paid to cover the debt, $880 million that could have gone on other services and better spending.
It is unfortunate that we are paying that level of debt, but that is what you have when the government cannot manage its finances, cannot manage its budget, cannot live within its means. It just continues to spend. The biggest item of spending we face over 25 years is, of course, the light rail, and it is the hidden cost of light rail. There is an extra $51 million in the budget this year for light rail, but how much of the TAMS budget will be light rail? How much work has to be done in preparation? We do not get that cost. The government will not tell the full story on the cost of light rail because I suspect it is very, very embarrassing. Mr Corbell has an opportunity to jump up in this debate. He and Mr Rattenbury can outline how much of the spending in their departments is attributable to light rail before we get to the start line, before we sign any big contracts, before we make that commitment.
We have a budget that lacks any central focus, that lacks any real target and that lacks in so many areas except for being, as Dr Bourke said, a traditional Labor budget. We all know what that means—debt, deficit and higher taxes. With that, I move the amendment circulated in my name:
Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:
“(1) notes the Government’s failure to:
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