Page 479 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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Everything that Mr Doszpot said should have been directed at his federal colleagues, who cut the funding for concessions, who abolished the national partnership that was working to assist all states and territories to deliver more concessions. What did his party do in 2014? They cut it. All the cant, all the hypocrisy that we have just heard from the shadow minister needs to be brought to this Assembly’s attention and the wider Canberra community’s attention for exactly what has happened in the past two years. It is that concessions have been cut by the Liberal Party, not just here in Canberra but right across Australia. That is what his party stands for, and that is what he is accountable for.
Let us be clear that expenditure on the territory’s concessions program has been rising. My government has been increasing funding for concessions every year. Expenditure on centrally administered concessions increased over five years by 54 per cent, an average annual growth rate of nine per cent from about $30 million in 2008-09 to close to $47 million in 2013-14. We budgeted $51.3 million for the concessions program in 2015-16, which included one-off supplementation of nearly $7 million, or an increase of 15 per cent on the original budgeted amount, to meet increased demand for concession payments.
This is in addition, of course, to that from the commonwealth. This is our money, new money coming in. Of course, what we have seen from the commonwealth government was a cessation of the ongoing concession funding of $2.2 million to the ACT in the commonwealth’s 2014-15 budget.
We were not going to sit back and let the most vulnerable in the community suffer from this cut. It meant that the ACT government stepped in and met the shortfall, as any responsible government would do. We have sought to explore what improvements can be made to the territory’s concessions program’s fairness and targeting to best address social disadvantage while also exploring ways to strengthen the long-term sustainability of the scheme. As such, last year we announced a review into the scheme.
Four key principles underpin the review—equity, effectiveness, accessibility and transparency—to ensure that the concessions are targeted at those with the greatest need; that concessions assist with access to essential services considered fundamental to a reasonable quality of life; that information about concessions is accessible to all low income households; and that concessions are regularly monitored and reviewed.
The review currently underway is about ensuring that our concessions system is financially sustainable in the long term but most importantly it is about providing the greatest benefit to the lowest income Canberrans. Making sure that vulnerable and disadvantaged people in the community have access to concessions for transport and basic services is a fundamental principle for my government and this will not change.
As I have said many times, this review is about the government committing to maintaining the overall amount delivered through concessions but it is about ensuring that those who need the assistance are the ones who are receiving it. We want to target our concessions to those who need assistance the most. Let us be clear: the only
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