Page 1472 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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For a better prioritisation, at 8 o’clock tonight Greens Senator Richard Di Natale will provide the Greens budget response. I think in that we will see a much better articulation of what a fair and sustainable Australia looks like. I would encourage people who have the opportunity to listen to that speech tonight because I think we will see there a true indication of what a fair and sustainable budget would be and a reflection of certainly the kind of priorities that the Greens think are much more important than what we saw in last night’s budget.
Mr Hanson said today that he found an article about how great the budget was for the ACT. Like the Chief Minister, I read the whole Canberra Times website, not just the bits that suited me. It is interesting to see the first line of Tom McElroy’s article, which says:
The ACT is a loser from Treasurer Scott Morrison’s first federal budget, as the absence of marginal seats and pressure on the public service have resulted in few funding commitments.
Let us not cherrypick the articles that suit us. Read the whole paper and actually get a sense of the analysis out there. What we saw last night from a local perspective was further cuts to our cultural institutions. We are already seeing the removal of programs, the loss of opportunities, the reduction of outreach into the community, which is what these cultural institutions are supposed to do.
Last night we saw a further 63 full-time equivalent positions removed from our vital cultural institutions. That has an impact locally in terms of the loss of jobs and the impact on those people who are citizens of our fair city. But it has an impact right across Australia because so many people come here to visit our cultural institutions. They are Australian institutions, not Canberra institutions. We have seen a further downgrading of their capability to deliver the programs that they should.
That will also mean a lack of outreach into the broader Australian community, because it means that things like their travelling roadshows and the other programs that they run will be the first things to go when it comes to having to find the sort of savings that have been put on them. Again, if one looks a bit further through the internet reports, the ABC website talked about the public sector being a loser, with a further increase in the efficiency dividend. That will also impact in Canberra in a range of different ways.
One of the positives in last night’s budget for Canberra was a small increase in the funding for light rail. It is quite interesting to see that the Liberal government continues to support that project in Canberra. I am pleased that they continue to do that despite the opposition of their local colleagues. Of course, it is because they recognise the value of these kinds of projects. There is no greater recognition than putting your money where your mouth is, and that is what the federal government continues to do.
In terms of priorities, last night’s budget says a lot about the way a government makes choices about what goes into a budget. The Australian aid budget, after a further
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