- Home
- Hansard & Papers
- Legislative Assembly
- 8 June 2005
Appropriation Bill
Appropriation (Parliament) Bill
Appropriation (Special Offices) Bill
Fiscal Responsibility Bill
State Revenue Legislation Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill
Printing Tips |
Print selected text
| Full Day Hansard Transcript
« Prior Item |
Item 4 of 36
| Next Item »
APPROPRIATION BILL
APPROPRIATION (PARLIAMENT) BILL
APPROPRIATION (SPECIAL OFFICES) BILL
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY BILL
STATE REVENUE LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (BUDGET MEASURES) BILL
Page: 16643
Second Reading
Debate resumed from 26 May 2005.
Ms PETA SEATON (Southern Highlands) [10.42 a.m.]: This budget is a true Labor budget—it is irresponsible, it is incompetent, it is lazy, and it is dangerous. It maintains Labor's high State taxes, and starts to drive us deep into debt with none of the spending disciplines needed to underpin responsible debt financing. This budget is dead on arrival—because wage growth forecasts are already shattered—according to the Treasurer, who by his own admission in this Chamber is already reaching for the Treasurer's Advance. You cannot trust Labor on borrowing; you cannot trust it to deliver anything it says on infrastructure; you cannot trust its assumptions on wages and housing recovery; and you cannot believe it when it says it will cut growth in government expenses in 2006-07. There is no new thinking in the budget.
This is the sort of budget that a defensive, guilty government draws up when it knows the proverbial is about to hit the fan, and its trying to spin one last desperate time to give the impression of doing what should have been done over the past 10 years—10 years of the best economic climate one could imagine. With more than $7 billion of additional revenues, the Government has spent every bit of it and more. It has come back for massive pre-budget cash raids on spending variations, not for unexpected disasters like drought or flood but for luxury Ministerial offices and legal bills. The Treasurer tried to pull some sort of moral defence out of his avowed socialist leftie past when he said, "This is a budget about social justice." Where is the social justice in losing one's job because one's train was late, or waiting in a hospital queue with a sick child, or watching one's shop get broken into and knowing that the odds favour the culprit walking away scot-free?
There is none, but the Government would have us believe that everyone else is to blame, that $10 billion of debt to fix up its neglected housekeeping is okay, and that it is acceptable for the largest State in Australia to be the highest taxing state and the lowest on gross State product [GSP] growth. Labor believes that the taxpayers and families of New South Wales should continue to cough up to pay for ever-larger public sector bureaucracies, keeping their union boss mates happy, while we pay for fewer and poorer quality frontline services. Despite the evidence of respected economists, Labor ignored all the warnings about the fiscal impact of high State taxes on jobs and investment in New South Wales.
There is no relief for businesses on payroll tax, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for New South Wales businesses near the Queensland border. Business in Queanbeyan, Albury and other border towns pay the price for this State's highest taxing status. Hardworking mum and dad investors have already had to pay an unjustified year of land tax on every property that is not the principal place of residence. And after this budget they will continue to face the destructive vendor duty, which has killed the already cooling property market in New South Wales and generated additional property transactions in lower taxing Queensland and Victoria.
Access Economics has demonstrated that if the vendor tax were abolished, clawback would be between $140 million and $280 million—against revenues of only $340 million—this figure being about half the Government's original revenue forecasts. The budget papers prove the point: with stamp duty receipts falling $160 million short of the forecasts, down to $3.03 billion. But Labor cannot help itself on tax. It hiked the rate on insurance tax from 5 per cent to 9 per cent, claiming that was justified as it aligned New South Wales with other States. Wrong! Treasurer Egan pledged in the mini-budget that the Government is determined not to reverse or claw back the billion dollars per year it previously cut from payroll tax, insurance stamp duty, motor vehicle registration, and the like. Treasurer Refshauge broke that promise, and failed to mention that New South Wales alone has the additional burden of insurance protection tax.
So New South Wales businesses and families pay double insurance tax courtesy of Labor, and about $50 a policy extra on household, travel, mortgage, and public liability insurances. The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will oppose this insurance tax increase. But Labor did not stop there; it also removed the exemption cap on mortgage rollover. The tax free threshold for refinancing a mortgage will be removed for mortgages over $1 million, which is expected to reap at least $20 million extra a year and add further costs to investors and renters as investors are discouraged from seeking more competitive finance rates. The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will oppose this mortgage refinance tax increase. Treasurer Refshauge likes tax. He told the 1993 Australian Labor Party conference that he questioned the benefit of the personal income tax cuts and said that the Federal Government should instead be raising taxes for the better off, such as himself.
Treasurer Refshauge is an unreconstructed class-war leftie fighting a battle that has long gone. He misses the fundamental point, which is the strong evidence that tax relief on all tax categories is a factor in growing economic activity. Removing tax burdens makes the pie bigger, according to the Centre for Independent Studies. Access Economics modelling for the Business Coalition for Tax Reform shows that removing the nine intergovernmental agreement hidden taxes would generate $3.25 billion in additional gross domestic product growth. Economic growth in New South Wales is stagnating. Growth was predicted at 3.25 per cent in 2004-05 but is now revised downwards to a pathetic 2 per cent. Under Labor, GSP growth has plummeted. The Reserve Bank of Australia's quarterly statement on monetary policy shows that Queensland's jobs growth rate is nearly double the national rate, New South Wales employment growth is a lazy 1.3 per cent. Yet in the face of all this evidence, Labor will not cut tax.
As with metropolitan and infrastructure planning, Labor has no longer-term plan to reduce the tax burden on New South Wales citizens. This State cannot afford not to have a tax reduction plan. The Coalition is committed to taking every opportunity to drive down State taxes by cutting waste, enforcing the discipline of performance benchmarking to rein in public sector growth, and having the political will to rebuild New South Wales. Our tax reduction objectives are driven by the imperative to improve New South Wales competitiveness with our competitor States and our global competitors such as New Zealand. We have started our tax reduction plan with a commitment to abolish vendor duty. Labor seems to have a set against people who try to ensure their future independence from the public purse. People do that by offsetting risk, buying an investment property or taking out insurance. Labor's tax regime and pattern of tax increases attack this very group of people whose values we ought to be encouraging. A failure to rein in government expenditure and a failure to link wage increases with productivity reforms are the fatal flaws in this budget.
According to Treasury's advice to the New South Wales Remuneration Tribunal, the wage cost index shows that from its start in September 1997 to March 2004 New South Wales public sector wages have increased by 1.5 per cent per annum in real terms relative to a 0.7 per cent increase for New South Wales private sector employees. General government total expenses are predicted to grow 6.4 per cent in 2005-06, yet the rate will apparently miraculously fall in 2006-06 and, after June 2007, to 3.4 per cent, 3.6 per cent and 4 per cent respectively over the next three budget years. That is impossible to believe.
Labor has never managed to bring in expenses at their forecast growth rate. Since 2001 it has exceeded its budgeted growth rates on average by 4.5 per cent. Labor has no hope of halving its future general government expenses growth rates when its wage cost assumptions have already been proved wrong. The budget papers admit that there remains considerable risk to budget outcomes unless settlements are consistent with the Government's wages policy. That has already happened. Last week the Treasurer admitted he would be using the Treasurer's Advance to pay wage cost blowouts. Treasury admits that 1 per cent of nurses pay increases are unaccounted for and approximately 0.5 per cent of the pay increases for police and teachers are also unaccounted for. Overall, upwards of 2 per cent, and possibly more, is not budgeted for in 2005-06. Standard and Poor's assessed the budget risks as follows:
Operating surpluses are... weaker than previously forecast and are now paper thin. Because NSW is one of the highest taxing States there is not much flexibility to repair finances if things go wrong.
Wages are now over 50 per cent of all expenditures. Growth in revenues, at 5.5 per cent, is lower than growth in expenses, at 6.4 per cent. The Government approaches its wages policy the wrong way round. We need instead to be clear about the outcomes we want from the services we provide and then source the staff and services through negotiation and setting performance targets. It is important to understand the real debt situation. The Carr Government has now flicked the lever to a traditional Labor debt binge, which is not sustainable, while it fails to justify or reconcile its expenditure forecasts against current demands and fails to commit to any structural and deep-seated public sector reform and spending discipline.
This is a disastrous recipe for New South Wales by Labor. It is now borrowing around $10 billion over five years, but not for new visionary projects to solve our rail crisis or to provide more water for Sydney or farmers. Not a single drop more water and not a single new rail project have been provided. This debt is to fix up the run-down infrastructure that Labor ignored for the past 10 years and short-changed, as it stripped more dividends from energy and water utilities, and this year it is projected to increase by $147 million against last year's forecast to $1.906 billion. The net operating format puts New South Wales on a slim $303 million operating surplus.
This is the first full budget year operating on this format. It is important that we recognise that if the operating result were expressed in the same format as it was last year on net lending, the Government would be reporting a deficit of $979 million. If Nick Greiner had used Labor's net operating result when he took on the job to repair Labor's basket case economy through the depths of the Keating recession that "we had to have", he would have been able to claim budget surpluses of around $648 million. That is clearly ridiculous as the net lending balance reported a deficit inherited from Labor of $1,280 million.
Labor is effectively rorting the budget presentation to show a surplus of $303 million when the true deficit, based on the Loan Council's agreed reporting format, is $970 million. Labor will say that the old format can be seen in the back of the budget papers but I did not hear the Treasurer say anything about the New South Wales general government sector [GGS] balance sheet in table 9.4. The fine print shows that while Labor claims net debt or assets this year of $787 million, in June 2007 that becomes a $3.7 billion deficit, and so-called borrowings of $3.988 billion in the form of deposits to the Liability Management Fund this year push underlying net debt to a deficit of $3.2 billion. Any debt undertaken by government must be appropriate to the capacity of the balance sheet to manage revenue and expense volatility, maintain a stable and competitive tax regime, and demonstrate a transparent and responsible approach to public trading enterprise [PTE] sector debt, dividends and liabilities.
It is hard to see any justification for this Government to increase net debt and financial liabilities, given that there is little capacity to absorb shock and no willingness to take tough recurrent spending decisions. It is clear that the forward estimates beyond 2005-06 deliberately understate the rate of likely growth in government expenditure by at least one-third. As a result, the blow-out in borrowings and debt, and total financial liabilities, will be much greater than the Government admits. The Treasurer must now reveal how he intends to achieve the Government's new target of 6 per cent net liabilities to GSP by 2015.
If that is his intended target, the presentation of the annual budget result must be related to that target. Failure to do so could imperil our triple-A credit rating. We know from experience that we cannot trust Labor to borrow. We especially cannot trust it to borrow and tax together. We have a wafer thin surplus, even on Labor's deceptive and generous reporting format. That is a dangerous foundation for the future. We must also understand the truth about net debt and liabilities in the general and PTE sectors. The combination of GGS and PTE debt, including unfunded liabilities, is $44.1 billion, forecast to grow to $61.2 billion in 2009.
The Government is claiming that net debt is now under control and that it can abandon the General Government Debt Elimination Act and move to address financial liabilities. We should not accept that claim on face value because the combination of the slim operating surplus and the underlying net debt in table 9.4 shows the vulnerability of this claim to unfunded wages blowouts and a property market slowdown. Achieving GGS net debt of 1 per cent of GSP has been at the expense of the PTE sector, which has been loaded up with debt through a decade of dividend stripping and now a new commitment in this budget to load $8.7 billion onto total State sector net debt, including an increase in PTE sector net debt of $8.5 billion over the next four years.
Debt reduction of unfunded liabilities will be achieved partly by borrowing more and increasing net debt in future years. We could argue that the objects of the General Government Debt Elimination Act have not been met, particularly principle 7 on tax restraint, as we have seen from tax increases in recent years. An analysis of the fiscal responsibility bill reveals that the Government is aware of the precariousness of the State's finances over the short term as a result of its own recklessness. It has drafted this bill in such as way as to enable it to further abandon fiscal disciplines and targets.
Specifically, the bill abandons any short-term fiscal targets. It thereby abandons reference to maintaining the highest possible credit ratings; it abandons the requirement for a report-back to Parliament within three months on a comprehensive financial management framework; and it abandons the requirement for Government specifically and properly to maintain physical assets. Michael Costa said there were 20 per cent too many public servants. What on earth could justify any government continuing to pay nearly 300 public sector staff on the displaced list, costing around $17 million a year? Millions have been wasted on infrastructure blowouts. When the Premier re-announced his 2005 infrastructure plan, he quietly hoped we would not notice the number of cancelled projects that have been abandoned by this Government.
Liberal Leader John Brogden revealed last week that in this budget alone there are $515 million of cost overruns and project blowouts. How could anyone believe the Premier's latest claims to deliver infrastructure? No doubt we will keep hearing more re-announcements about projects and tenders, but on the experience of the past 10 years they will never happen. They will be delayed and they will blow out and eat into other capital plans. Meanwhile, across the borders in Queensland and Victoria they are just getting on with building new infrastructure. Labor has no new ideas and the Treasurer has no idea at all. As I have to deal with amendments within my allocated time I ask for an extension of time. [Extension of time agreed to.]
I have circulated amendments that give effect to the changes we propose to reduce the tax burden on the citizens of New South Wales. In the April 2004 mini-budget the Carr Government introduced two greedy new taxes that aimed to hit hardworking families, businesses and investors in the guts and squeeze every last ounce of cash out of them. These included the new vendor duty and the removal of the land tax threshold on investment properties, which turned every mum and dad investor into a new taxpayer contributing to the Premier's coffers. The Coalition voted against both those taxes in the mini-budget of April last year and immediately committed to abolishing the 2.25 per cent vendor duty and restoring an indexed land tax threshold. We then worked hard with families, with the property and construction industry, and with unions to campaign against the Government's greedy tax grab. All were united against the tax and its destructive effect on the economy of New South Wales.
Yet as late as yesterday the Treasurer continued to claim that the vendor tax is good for New South Wales. New South Wales is the highest-taxing State in Australia, and will continue to be so under Labor. The Coalition opposes Labor's dangerous tax-and-spend incompetence. The New South Wales Liberal-Nationals Coalition will oppose the insurance tax increases proposed in the State Revenue Legislation Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill, and we will oppose the mortgage refinance tax increase. I table the amendments that give effect to those two proposed changes.
We do not believe that Labor has any justification for increasing existing taxes or introducing new taxes. This is the Government that has had record revenues in the past decade, including $7 billion in revenue above and beyond its expectations—and it has spent every bit of that and more. The Government has returned to Parliament year after year with budget variations cash raids to pay for its mismanagement and waste, its cosy union deals at taxpayer expense and its bloated senior bureaucracies. This is why the Government should be stopped from raising more taxes. We will not give the green light to more costs on families and businesses in order to pay for Labor's reckless incompetence. New South Wales should be reducing tax, not increasing it.
Schedules 2 and 3 of the State Revenue Legislation Amendment (Budget Measures) Bill relate to land tax. The Government has subjected the mum and dad investors of New South Wales to a year of unjustified land tax for doing nothing more than trying to secure their financial future. The measures in the bill to restore an indexed land tax threshold are there because the Coalition, mum and dad investors, and industries that provide homes, commercial buildings and construction-related jobs made a case that the Government could no longer ignore. The Coalition supports the measures in schedules 2 and 3, which restore an indexed land tax threshold for land tax and effectively reverse the land tax changes in Labor's April mini-budget. We also note that the bill makes a number of changes to vendor duty. We reaffirm our commitment that the Opposition continues to oppose the Carr Government's 2.25 per cent vendor duty and is committed to abolishing it in government.
The Opposition does not believe that the Carr Government should raise taxes on businesses, farmers and families in order to pay for its own incompetence and recklessness. We will therefore vote against the two tax increases in this revenue bill. We will vote against the increase in insurance duty from 5 per cent to 9 per cent, and we will vote against the removal of the concession for mortgage duty on refinancing mortgages. We simply do not believe that these tax increases are justified or necessary in New South Wales. On the contrary, we believe that taxes should be reduced in this State to relieve the burden on our families, farmers and businesses and to restore our competitiveness in relation to other States.
The amendments are important because we have seen this Government rely increasingly on simply raising taxation at the expense of people whose values we should be encouraging. We ought to be encouraging people who make provision for the future and those who want to invest in New South Wales and create jobs. The Coalition believes that, to restore growth and competitiveness in New South Wales, we must reduce State taxes, cut waste and rebuild New South Wales. Any of us who runs a small business, works in a business, raises a family, or works to secure his or her future knows the frustration of seeing hard-earned dollars wasted by a lazy government. The Government should subject itself to the same accountability and disciplines that apply to any business, non-government organisation [NGO], or family.
State government should be no bigger than is necessary to do its job effectively and to respond to new demands. It should actively pursue private and NGO skills in responsible partnerships when others can do things better. Government needs to question its role constantly and be flexible and innovative in networking to achieve the best possible combination of participants in order to produce the outcomes wanted by the community. We will never get this right while we avoid a transparent evaluation of the Government's performance. The Carr Government has studiously avoided any meaningful benchmarking for the past 10 years and avoided any imperatives for public sector reform. The Treasurer has shut down any public scrutiny in his order to the chair of the Council on the Cost and Quality of Government that COCQG's performance report no longer be produced and published. The Government is burying the evidence of its own financial incompetence.
The Leader of the Opposition has committed the Coalition to tackling this issue head on, with the implementation of annual state of the State reports that measure the Government's progress in improving real outcomes on social and other indicators. For example, the reports will measure the Government's success in tackling recidivism, reducing the number of child deaths in State care, raising literacy rates in gaols, and increasing the number of children adopted into permanent homes. We will also introduce performance benchmarking against interstate, international and private-NGO comparators. This will be an historic reform in New South Wales and tough on a future Liberal-Nationals government. It will be very uncomfortable at times, and I have no doubt that future Ministers will sometimes wish it were otherwise. But that is a good thing and exactly what people expect of an honest and accountable government.
On budget day the Treasurer talked about spending, spending, spending. At no point did he mention outcomes, results or evaluation. Every dollar of tax collected by government is a contract of trust—trust on the part of the taxpayer that it will be spent responsibly, acknowledging that it is their property, in order to invest in a community good, such as a public facility or provide a necessary public service. It is therefore incumbent on governments to constantly improve disciplines regarding their use of that money. It should be a principle of any responsible government that any dollar of tax excess to overall requirements is returned. If the choice arises, I believe that a dollar in the hands of a citizen will return more to the economy than a dollar kept unjustifiably in the hands of a government.
The Government must constantly review the activities on which it spends that money. This means that every day the Government must ask itself: What needs to be done by government, why is it really necessary, what outcomes do we expect, who is the best entity to do this, what is a reasonable cost to do it, how will we test whether it is being done properly and at the best cost and quality, how do we build in continuing improvement, and when will be the time to stop? If the Government is not achieving the results expected or needed it must have the will to change tack and find a better way. No government should think it has the luxury of using other people's money to do things less well than they could be done otherwise. That is why the Leader of the Opposition announced a new policy approach to managing the finances and outputs of the State of New South Wales. Performance benchmarking is such a discipline.
The Carr Government will not submit itself to proper performance benchmarking because it knows that will reveal the truth about endemic waste and poor management that it would rather bury. A Brogden-Stoner government will encourage performance within government by establishing a set of clear goals for government and targets for every agency, reporting publicly on all agencies' performance against the targets, ensuring the accuracy of this reporting by having the data signed off by the Auditor-General, and benchmarking every agency's costs and performance against available interstate and international data, both public and private sectors. A Liberal-Nationals government will stipulate its critical measures of performance and be assessed against them. The Government must shift its focus away from budget process to service delivery.
It is only when we know the answer to these questions that we can tell taxpayers honestly that we have spent their money responsibly. If there is a better way, we expect taxpayers to want us to find it and do it. There is no reason to be afraid of testing the performance of government when it can produce real benefits for the people who rely on State government services. We know that infrastructure and services in New South Wales are not good enough, and we know they can be better. But the Carr Government refuses to take steps to fix the problem; it does not want to submit to that transparency and accountability. This is a policy that a future government will find tough. There will be times when the results are confronting—and so they should be. Performance benchmarking is the "honest broker" that will give taxpayers confidence that there is a test on government, overseen by the independence of the Auditor-General, to ensure that taxpayers and residents are getting value for money.
This performance discipline will open new opportunities to improve services and choices, to save taxpayers' money and achieve tax reductions, to focus government on priorities in cutting waste and rebuild New South Wales. The first casualty will be Labor's nonsense, no-forced redundancy policy. The Coalition has already outlined new approaches to back up accountability in government, including reforming public sector corporate governance, cutting wasteful fat cat bureaucracies and redeploying resources to front-line services, pursuing productivity improvements in all wage negotiations, structural reform of government to improve outcomes, prioritising infrastructure under the responsibility of the Premier, Federal/State reform to remove duplication and costs, and to encourage private sector participation in infrastructure. We need to have the political will to make those reforms happen.
Significantly, unlike Labor, the Opposition believes people should be rewarded and encouraged for working to invest in a secure future. That is why the Opposition opposed Labor's creation of 400,000 new mum and dad investor taxpayers when it removed the land tax threshold, that is why the Opposition recommits to abolish Labor's vendor duty, that is why the Opposition commits to pursuing further tax reforms, and that is why it foreshadowed two amendments to oppose the new tax measures in the revenue bill. I am concerned that today the Government has sought to shut down the opportunity for the Opposition to vote against those two new tax measures. The Government does not want to subject its own members to the embarrassment of having them publicly accountable for having voted down an opportunity to give tax relief to families, farmers and businesses in New South Wales.
The two amendments would make significant savings to businesses that are now saddled with an increase in the cost of insurance tax, and they would give significant relief to families that are now struggling to afford home and contents insurance. The Government seems to have forgotten that in the last floods and fires it discovered that some people cannot afford insurance, and this will make it even harder for them to do so. It is appalling that the Government has sought to shut down debate on those two very important tax measures and an absolute outrage that it is denying the Opposition the opportunity to move those amendments. My advice from the Clerk is that it is possible to amend such a bill, and the Opposition should have had the opportunity to vote on the two amendments. This is nothing more than a cover-up by this Government, which does not want to subject its members to the embarrassment of having to vote for these two new tax measures. The Opposition remains opposed to the new tax measures on insurance tax and mortgage refinance. It is appalling that businesses are being asked to shoulder these two new tax measures to cover-up the incompetence of the Carr Government. [Time expired.]
Dr ANDREW REFSHAUGE (Marrickville—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) [11.13 a.m.], in reply: Rhetoric, polemic, whinging, whining, classic Opposition: reckless and no place to go. We have not heard one idea that is worth taking up—not a policy, not a plan. It is disappointing that the Leader of the Opposition—who was not here to hear the shadow Treasurer making her first speech on a budget—
Mr Milton Orkopoulos: Or her colleagues.
Dr ANDREW REFSHAUGE: Her colleagues are not here either. It is disappointing that the Coalition, which is putting itself up as an alternative government, has no policies and fell back on constant whinging and whining. Even the Prime Minister has said, "Get rid of that—it's wrong." The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer talked about the infrastructure crisis. I remind them of what happened on 3 June at the press conference of the Council of Australian Governments, when John Howard said:
In the area of infrastructure, it is the unanimous view of the heads of government before you, that we do not believe there is a crisis in infrastructure in Australia.
He also said:
I note the fact that over the past few months a number of State budgets have been brought down in which there has been very, very heavy investment in infrastructure.
The Prime Minister of Australia has shown his interest in Australia as a whole and said, "We are spending on infrastructure, recognising what we are doing here in New South Wales." He told the Opposition that it is wrong—that there is no infrastructure crisis. The Coalition ought to listen to its Prime Minister and the people who are successful in government—this and other State governments—if it wants to be an alternative government. The Opposition should not undermine the Prime Minister, who was absolutely right when he said that there is no infrastructure crisis. The shadow Treasurer constantly picks on Health, but the Prime Minister said, "We have a very good health system." He also said:
I'm frankly sick of the denigration of the Australian health system and it happens too often and I've often said if you're going to get ill it's better to get ill in Bankstown or Broadmeadows than the Bronx or Brixton because we have a much better health system.
The shadow Treasurer should get off the back of the health system, stop making carping criticism, and follow her Prime Minister. She should recognise that we have an incredibly good health care system, although we are always looking to do better. What would she do if she cut taxes? Would she take the money out of Health?
Mr Milton Orkopoulos: Off the nurses.
Dr ANDREW REFSHAUGE: Off the nurses. In relation to wage increases, where was the shadow Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition when the shadow Education spokesperson said, "Give teachers a dramatic increase"? The shadow Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition did not say, "No, a regular wage increase" but were absolutely silent. The shadow Minister for Health also said, "Give the nurses more." She cannot have it both ways: on the one hand, say, "Give them massive wage rises" and, on the other, say, "The wages rises are out of control." The honourable member for Southern Highlands should get her act together because, if she does not, the people of New South Wales will not support her. When she has this reckless approach and says, "We will get rid of taxes because they are bad; we don't like them" but will not say where the savings will be made, the Government knows she is absolutely unbelievable and bereft of ideas.
The last time the State was on credit watch was in October 1991, when Nick Greiner was Premier. Who was an adviser in his office in October 1991? None other than the honourable member for Southern Highlands! I ought to publicise a little more that when the Greiner Government was on credit watch she was giving it advice. Every year Nick Greiner was adding to our deficit and our debt. In the first few years when the shadow Treasurer was an adviser, the debt was $515 million, which then blew out to a $1.2 billion deficit, a year later a $1.6 billion deficit—$900 million, $600 million. When Labor came to office it had to put its extra revenues into, and pay off, a $12 billion debt because of Coalition mismanagement. We paid off Coalition debt. The honourable member ought to get her figures right. In regard to the general government sector, we now have a net State debt of about 1.1 per cent.
Mr Steve Whan: So it's right.
Dr ANDREW REFSHAUGE: That is absolutely right: it is a modest debt. What does Standard and Poor's say about this Government's State debt over the next few years? It says that the Government's budget does not threaten the State's triple-A rating. There is nothing wrong with a deficit to fund capital spending, especially with a balance sheet as strong as ours. When the shadow Minister starts to get reckless with taxpayer's money and says that the Opposition will get rid of all these taxes, but supports other shadow Ministers to argue for more wages explosion, where is her credibility? Absolutely nowhere at all. I wanted to hear Opposition policies; I wanted to hear what it is going to do. However, all I heard was polemic and rhetoric. The shadow Minister sounded as though she was sorting herself out—
Mr Milton Orkopoulos: Her PhD thesis.
Dr ANDREW REFSHAUGE: It might be a glee club. She should be explaining how she believes in capitalist economics. I say to the shadow Treasurer, "Great for you! That is wonderful!" But what would she do for the people of New South Wales? The honourable member said she will cut spending and cut public sector wages. She said she would get rid of a whole bunch of public servants. Actually, those "public servants" are in universities. Apparently her leader could not work out the difference between State government employees and university employees. The shadow Treasurer went on a weekend frolic, saying she would get rid of 26,000 people—most of whom are employed by universities, so she could not get rid of them anyway! It is about time the honourable member got real about what the Coalition would do if it happened to be in government.
The shadow Treasurer is putting up nit-picking ideas of what she thinks might be wrong with the budget. That reminds me of that great publicist Ernest Bevan of Britain, who said that an Opposition leader looks for trouble, finds it whether it exists or not, diagnoses it incorrectly, and applies the wrong remedy. The shadow Treasurer has done that every step of the way. She has been following Ernest Bevan's line absolutely. It is as if she wrote the textbook herself, and has been picking it up and following it all the way along.
This Government has been delivering services. We have put extra funding into our hospitals. As a result, over the past 10 years—I am sure not just because of the hospitals and community health services, but other things as well—there has been a 20 per cent reduction in the death rate from heart attack and a 20 per cent reduction in the death rate from cancer. This is pretty good stuff that is happening in our health care system. No wonder the Prime Minister says, "Stop denigrating the health care system." These are benefits that are being provided for the people of New South Wales—and for the people of the other States and Territories as well, because the Commonwealth also is putting in extra money.
In our schools, students aged 15 have the best literary rates in the world, up there with Finland students. It is pretty much the same for numeracy. The Government is delivering the results, and that is because we are providing funds for frontline services. I am proud that this State has the highest paid nurses and the highest paid teachers in this country. I think that is a good and worthwhile thing. It will make sure that New South Wales gets the best nurses and teachers. We are not opposed to that. I think moderate wage increases are reasonable for our nurses, teachers and police officers because they are doing the job for their people. The shadow Treasurer would cut their wages, reduce their numbers and under-fund the services. That is a reckless approach. Not only will Government members criticise her; quite obviously, the electorate will also do so in about two years time.
The Opposition criticises the Government over its spending on infrastructure. The Opposition claims there is an infrastructure crisis. It has it wrong on both counts. The Government has committed to significantly increase spending on infrastructure over the next four years to $34.7 billion. That is, $1 million an hour for the next four years is being spent on infrastructure. Some projects come in early and some projects come in late, because most are being undertaken by the private sector. Issues faced by that sector, which are often of a technical nature, result in a rearrangement of completion dates. But the Government is spending the money. It is doing so because it believes in the future of New South Wales. We want to make sure that the future for New South Wales is bright. We will not waste that money; we will not be reckless. We will make sure that infrastructure planning is delivering for the people of New South Wales. I would be ashamed if I put up the response that came from the Opposition: no policies, no ideas and no plans. This whingeing and carping Opposition deserves to stay in Opposition forever. I support the bills.
Motion agreed to.
Bills read a second time and passed through remaining stages.
Last modified 05/12/2007 16:33:09 : Update this page