Ms MARTIN - 2000-05-17
Since November last year interest rate rises driven by the Liberal Party’s GST have added $106 a month to the cost of the average home loan. From 1 July Territorians will pay 8.7% more for power under the GST. Your budget increases water and sewerage costs by 5%, stamp duty on insurance goes up by 10%, and even bus fares are hit. In return for these price hikes you are offering a handful of recycled promises.
Treasurer, will you admit that you are hitting the pockets of Territorians because you are simply unable to follow your own advice articulated so clearly in the budget speech last year of living within your means?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, we are living within our means. Living within our means includes the capacity to pay debt. There are ...
Ms Martin: Your hand in Territorians’ back pocket.
Mr REED: Don’t be so rude; there are children watching, students watching, and people listening would like to hear the answer. You have asked a question and I will give you the honour of answering.
There are many Territorians who are living within their means. There are countless Territorians who are going to work and with their salaries they are buying a house. They do not have the cash up front to pay for it in total, so they’ve taken out a loan and they will, over time, pay back that loan and they will have an asset in the form of a house. In future years they might want to build extensions to that house, so they will take out a loan and they will pay for those extensions and those improvements and those assets over time. But they take out a loan which they have the capacity to pay. It has nothing to do with the fact that loans are offensive, that borrowings are offensive; it has everything to do with whether or not you have the capacity to pay the returns on the loan you have taken out.
Although there is a gross budget of $2 957 000m, $3000bn, that this government announced yesterday, the numbers are different but the principle is the same – do you have the capacity to pay. In terms of the government, just as it is in the terms of the Territorians who are paying off mortgages for their homes, the answer is: ‘Yes, we do have the capacity to pay’.
In front of the students, it is a shame for me to say that the opposition leader has been very deceitful in terms of her presentation of the increase in interest rates being attributed to the GST. It has nothing to do with the GST. The GST comes into place in July. The interest rates, if you listen to the financial and the economic circumstances that apply in Australia - and of course, we are influenced by those internationally - are set by the broad economy. We are experiencing pressures as a nation, as a result of the strength of, in particular, the American economy. Interest rates there went up 0.5% again overnight. That will have considerations, no doubt, in the marketplace in relation to the exchange rate of the Australian dollar. It is the marketplace that sets the circumstances in relation to interest rates. Don’t try and follow the Kim Beazley line of: ‘The GST is the blame for everything’.
Yes, there is a new tax system and, yes, we have to adjust to it. But help people to adjust to it, help business get ready for it, don’t try and confuse them or derail things along the way. Try for once in your life to be a little bit positive.
In terms of bus fares, yes, they have gone up. In terms of water and sewerage charges, yes, they have gone up ...
Ms Martin: Power.
Mr REED: It is nothing to do with this Northern Territory budget ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr REED: You can see by their behaviour and their ability to apply a smokescreen, and to apply damage as much as they can to yesterday’s budget, that even things that do not have any impact on the budget or are not even included in the budget, such as the GST increase for electricity charges - which has nothing to do with this budget, it’s a Commonwealth tax - is mentioned.
In relation to, for example, water charges, does it not seem appropriate that we should as a government recover the cost of providing water services to Territorians? Does it not seem appropriate to apply a charge to water that reflects the scarcity of the resource, the precious nature of water resources in a country as arid as our own? Do you not also understand that our water charges are at about the states’ average and that we are not over charging for water?
If you can’t make those difficult decisions, how can you possibly offer yourself as an alternative government. If you are trying to project to Territorians that under a government led by the Leader of the Opposition everything would be nice and cosy, no prices would go up, there would be no increase in debt – there is no vision, absolutely no vision. This is the Leader of the Opposition who didn’t have the tenacity to see the railway project through. It became for her a faded dream. The people across the Northern Territory will be reminded of this, because if she was in government she would not have had the tenacity to see it through, to provide the funding, and to provide the jobs and business opportunities that will flow to Territorians.
In Tennant Creek, $130m is to be spent between now and next year. $78m in Katherine. Imagine the activity it will create in terms of jobs ...
Mr Henderson: Jim Forscutt did not think much of the budget.
Mr REED: He has as much foresight as you. And that is about to the edge of your desk. Any mayor who can look down the budget paper and can see $78m worth of activity in his own backyard and say: ‘We got the budget crumbs’ – well, I think he will experience pretty big crumbs, pretty big loaves of bread falling down around him over the next 12 months. But we can excuse him because on Saturday week there is a council election and he has to make his mark, and good luck to him.
In terms of the railway vision, you did not have the strength to see it through. It became a faded dream. It got all too hard, it would have been too much work for you, and it would never have happened under a Labor government.
Here is another classic example that comes out of yesterday’s budget in terms of vision. This government yesterday secured the future of Alice Springs; it bought Owen Springs Station. The people of Alice Springs today, Territorians, will not reap the real benefit of that. It will be a decade or decades before the benefits are accrued to the people of Alice Springs. It will provide a space for Alice Springs to grow into as a township. It will provide commercial activities, tourism activities, national park activities, and growth of industry, the horticultural and pastoral industry. Ask yourself this - in fairness to future Territorians and the future of Alice Springs, who should pay for that capital asset that we purchased yesterday, because it is they who will accrue the benefit from it.
That is what debt, and appropriate use of debt, is all about; that is why you borrow money. So those people who are going to accrue that benefit over the next many decades will pay for it and contribute to it, and that is why you do not burden the people of Alice Springs or the taxpayers of the Northern Territory with the full cost of the purchase of that property today - it would be too much of a burden on them. It is an investment in the future and that is why future Territorians, I am sure, will look back and, in paying the interest rates and the capital off that loan for Owen Springs Station, will say: ‘Thank heavens that in the year 2000 we had a government in place that saw Alice Springs would need land to grow and they made that investment back then for our benefit’. That is what being a responsible government is about and that is why you are a failure.
Treasurer, will you admit that you are hitting the pockets of Territorians because you are simply unable to follow your own advice articulated so clearly in the budget speech last year of living within your means?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, we are living within our means. Living within our means includes the capacity to pay debt. There are ...
Ms Martin: Your hand in Territorians’ back pocket.
Mr REED: Don’t be so rude; there are children watching, students watching, and people listening would like to hear the answer. You have asked a question and I will give you the honour of answering.
There are many Territorians who are living within their means. There are countless Territorians who are going to work and with their salaries they are buying a house. They do not have the cash up front to pay for it in total, so they’ve taken out a loan and they will, over time, pay back that loan and they will have an asset in the form of a house. In future years they might want to build extensions to that house, so they will take out a loan and they will pay for those extensions and those improvements and those assets over time. But they take out a loan which they have the capacity to pay. It has nothing to do with the fact that loans are offensive, that borrowings are offensive; it has everything to do with whether or not you have the capacity to pay the returns on the loan you have taken out.
Although there is a gross budget of $2 957 000m, $3000bn, that this government announced yesterday, the numbers are different but the principle is the same – do you have the capacity to pay. In terms of the government, just as it is in the terms of the Territorians who are paying off mortgages for their homes, the answer is: ‘Yes, we do have the capacity to pay’.
In front of the students, it is a shame for me to say that the opposition leader has been very deceitful in terms of her presentation of the increase in interest rates being attributed to the GST. It has nothing to do with the GST. The GST comes into place in July. The interest rates, if you listen to the financial and the economic circumstances that apply in Australia - and of course, we are influenced by those internationally - are set by the broad economy. We are experiencing pressures as a nation, as a result of the strength of, in particular, the American economy. Interest rates there went up 0.5% again overnight. That will have considerations, no doubt, in the marketplace in relation to the exchange rate of the Australian dollar. It is the marketplace that sets the circumstances in relation to interest rates. Don’t try and follow the Kim Beazley line of: ‘The GST is the blame for everything’.
Yes, there is a new tax system and, yes, we have to adjust to it. But help people to adjust to it, help business get ready for it, don’t try and confuse them or derail things along the way. Try for once in your life to be a little bit positive.
In terms of bus fares, yes, they have gone up. In terms of water and sewerage charges, yes, they have gone up ...
Ms Martin: Power.
Mr REED: It is nothing to do with this Northern Territory budget ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr REED: You can see by their behaviour and their ability to apply a smokescreen, and to apply damage as much as they can to yesterday’s budget, that even things that do not have any impact on the budget or are not even included in the budget, such as the GST increase for electricity charges - which has nothing to do with this budget, it’s a Commonwealth tax - is mentioned.
In relation to, for example, water charges, does it not seem appropriate that we should as a government recover the cost of providing water services to Territorians? Does it not seem appropriate to apply a charge to water that reflects the scarcity of the resource, the precious nature of water resources in a country as arid as our own? Do you not also understand that our water charges are at about the states’ average and that we are not over charging for water?
If you can’t make those difficult decisions, how can you possibly offer yourself as an alternative government. If you are trying to project to Territorians that under a government led by the Leader of the Opposition everything would be nice and cosy, no prices would go up, there would be no increase in debt – there is no vision, absolutely no vision. This is the Leader of the Opposition who didn’t have the tenacity to see the railway project through. It became for her a faded dream. The people across the Northern Territory will be reminded of this, because if she was in government she would not have had the tenacity to see it through, to provide the funding, and to provide the jobs and business opportunities that will flow to Territorians.
In Tennant Creek, $130m is to be spent between now and next year. $78m in Katherine. Imagine the activity it will create in terms of jobs ...
Mr Henderson: Jim Forscutt did not think much of the budget.
Mr REED: He has as much foresight as you. And that is about to the edge of your desk. Any mayor who can look down the budget paper and can see $78m worth of activity in his own backyard and say: ‘We got the budget crumbs’ – well, I think he will experience pretty big crumbs, pretty big loaves of bread falling down around him over the next 12 months. But we can excuse him because on Saturday week there is a council election and he has to make his mark, and good luck to him.
In terms of the railway vision, you did not have the strength to see it through. It became a faded dream. It got all too hard, it would have been too much work for you, and it would never have happened under a Labor government.
Here is another classic example that comes out of yesterday’s budget in terms of vision. This government yesterday secured the future of Alice Springs; it bought Owen Springs Station. The people of Alice Springs today, Territorians, will not reap the real benefit of that. It will be a decade or decades before the benefits are accrued to the people of Alice Springs. It will provide a space for Alice Springs to grow into as a township. It will provide commercial activities, tourism activities, national park activities, and growth of industry, the horticultural and pastoral industry. Ask yourself this - in fairness to future Territorians and the future of Alice Springs, who should pay for that capital asset that we purchased yesterday, because it is they who will accrue the benefit from it.
That is what debt, and appropriate use of debt, is all about; that is why you borrow money. So those people who are going to accrue that benefit over the next many decades will pay for it and contribute to it, and that is why you do not burden the people of Alice Springs or the taxpayers of the Northern Territory with the full cost of the purchase of that property today - it would be too much of a burden on them. It is an investment in the future and that is why future Territorians, I am sure, will look back and, in paying the interest rates and the capital off that loan for Owen Springs Station, will say: ‘Thank heavens that in the year 2000 we had a government in place that saw Alice Springs would need land to grow and they made that investment back then for our benefit’. That is what being a responsible government is about and that is why you are a failure.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016