Mr MILLS - 2011-05-05
You have spent the last few days playing down the severity of the Territory’s debt position, confirmation that you are a deficit and debt denier. You have these cute little graphs. The other day, you told us, and anyone who would listen, that we are doing really well compared to Greece, Ireland and Portugal. When you compare that with per-capita debt …
Ms Lawrie: And Japan.
Mr MILLS: Yes. Ireland and Greece are not doing as well as the Territory, but we are not doing as well as Portugal.
With our per-capita debt only marginally behind the economic basket case of Greece, given that you have no money and the Commonwealth is about to slash assistance further, and you have no plan for budget surpluses, will you follow your normal practice and make Territorians clean up your mess?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, he is getting excited because his budget reply made page 13 of the NT News. It just goes to show how excited people were about what he had to say. His one-shot-in-the-locker, that ‘we will scrap the prison’, does not make any economic sense at all. He needs to listen to the expert committee advice – the one-shot-in-the-locker was canned pretty widely.
Very clearly, the opposition still does not understand, despite the fact the Chamber of Commerce, the Master Builders and the independent economist from the National Australia Bank have all said modest deficits are the thing to do at this time in the economic cycle. You need to keep Territorians in a job because private sector investment has fallen away as a result of the credit constraint following the global financial crisis. Industries are doing it tough. Without the higher public spend through that infrastructure spend, without the support we have flowing through the budgets in tourism initiatives and the like, you literally would have unemployment start to soar in the Territory. You would have businesses go to the wall and go under. You would start to drive down economic growth.
We know that is where the CLP was. We had zero per cent, and we were flatlining in economic growth when they were last in government. You had workers leaving the Territory in droves because construction did not have the cash to meet their capital program. Construction had nose-dived.
Modest deficits, manageable levels of debt going forward - even the economist at NAB said that to the media. You are never going to understand it because you are economic vandals.
For your own vanity, you would post a surplus in a budget at a time in an economic cycle where you need to be bold, responsible, and responsive to needs. Step up, take the pain of having to announce a modest deficit, because you will get a political slap like you are trying to do now, but it is the responsible and responsive thing to do.
Listen to industry - Master Builders, Chamber of Commerce, the economists are saying that manageable modest deficits, and manageable debt is the right thing in the economic cycle to do. GST revenues are down, the high public spend is up as a result of the global financial crisis. All the jurisdictions in Australia are into cash deficit country. Why? Because they did the responsible thing to step up the spend to support jobs in their jurisdictions. That is why our nation and the Territory missed the very worst of the global financial crisis. We responded swiftly with stimulus packages. We are continuing the stimulus in this budget. Because Commonwealth stimulus is dropping out, our infrastructure percentage spend is 70% of the infrastructure budget now.
Ms Lawrie: And Japan.
Mr MILLS: Yes. Ireland and Greece are not doing as well as the Territory, but we are not doing as well as Portugal.
With our per-capita debt only marginally behind the economic basket case of Greece, given that you have no money and the Commonwealth is about to slash assistance further, and you have no plan for budget surpluses, will you follow your normal practice and make Territorians clean up your mess?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, he is getting excited because his budget reply made page 13 of the NT News. It just goes to show how excited people were about what he had to say. His one-shot-in-the-locker, that ‘we will scrap the prison’, does not make any economic sense at all. He needs to listen to the expert committee advice – the one-shot-in-the-locker was canned pretty widely.
Very clearly, the opposition still does not understand, despite the fact the Chamber of Commerce, the Master Builders and the independent economist from the National Australia Bank have all said modest deficits are the thing to do at this time in the economic cycle. You need to keep Territorians in a job because private sector investment has fallen away as a result of the credit constraint following the global financial crisis. Industries are doing it tough. Without the higher public spend through that infrastructure spend, without the support we have flowing through the budgets in tourism initiatives and the like, you literally would have unemployment start to soar in the Territory. You would have businesses go to the wall and go under. You would start to drive down economic growth.
We know that is where the CLP was. We had zero per cent, and we were flatlining in economic growth when they were last in government. You had workers leaving the Territory in droves because construction did not have the cash to meet their capital program. Construction had nose-dived.
Modest deficits, manageable levels of debt going forward - even the economist at NAB said that to the media. You are never going to understand it because you are economic vandals.
For your own vanity, you would post a surplus in a budget at a time in an economic cycle where you need to be bold, responsible, and responsive to needs. Step up, take the pain of having to announce a modest deficit, because you will get a political slap like you are trying to do now, but it is the responsible and responsive thing to do.
Listen to industry - Master Builders, Chamber of Commerce, the economists are saying that manageable modest deficits, and manageable debt is the right thing in the economic cycle to do. GST revenues are down, the high public spend is up as a result of the global financial crisis. All the jurisdictions in Australia are into cash deficit country. Why? Because they did the responsible thing to step up the spend to support jobs in their jurisdictions. That is why our nation and the Territory missed the very worst of the global financial crisis. We responded swiftly with stimulus packages. We are continuing the stimulus in this budget. Because Commonwealth stimulus is dropping out, our infrastructure percentage spend is 70% of the infrastructure budget now.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016