ACT Budget - They've done it again!

Hmmm…a lot of these issues were around last election but for some reason Stanhopeless and his mob were voted in again?! Maybe this time around Canberrans will make a change?! Maybe the Libs aren’t that great either but it’s worth a shot?? They might not carry us into further debt??

Plus i will have my little rant on public art as well…what is the point?! I don’t understand the windmill things in Woden and Tuggeranong…especially when they cost so much!! If we were in a huge surplus and there was nothing better to spend the money on, go for it, but i would like the money out into our schools and hospitals over windmill art things.

One other question, why do our roads continually have to be resealed when there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with them? It seriously can’t be preventative? My parents in-law’s cul-de-sac was resurfaced…the street has about 10 houses and minimal traffic…there was nothing wrong with the road?! And it went from being a smooth surface to a rough surface with gravel everywhere. So no kids playing cricket, or roller blading etc anymore. Yay…more obesity problems!!

There’s only one solution I’m afraid.

Sell more land.

Might have hit on something there Thumper – could be the way to get them to finally release some office building land in the Gungahlin town centre!

Pommy bastard said :

Up The Duffy said :

. And best of all sell all the Junkie housing estates in Red Hill Civic and Northborne Ave for Apartment developments. Stick a the Junkies in a trailer park at Oaks estate and blow up the bridge at the crossing there.

Can’t disagree with that. The flats on Northborne, the Stuart Flats, the flats in Braddon and places like Strathgordon Court in Woden are on prime valuable land.

And why do we still have public housing in suburbs like Red Hill? Surely it’s bringing down the surrounding property values to a degree as well.
Imagine if it was all sold off. It would probably go for higher then top dollar (if that’s possible) given there would be no PH in the suburb anymore. And the local shopping centre would be able to attract shopkeepers and customers alike without the certain ‘element’ living nearby.

Fingers crossed no Members of Parliament read these threads, but in the State Of Schleswig Holstein in North Germany, the Guvment is broke. They invested in the “World Market” (Iceland) and lost big time. Now they ARE introducing a new tax to pay for the pot hole ridden roads, and wait for it…..a rainfall tax for anyone who has rainwater (from their house) feeding into the stormwater network. Then the Federal Guv gave the State millions of Euro’s to help keep a minor bank affloat, when it could have been spent on infrastructure. “Starting to sound familiar”……Yeah. Same shit, different State/Country.

Up The Duffy said :

. And best of all sell all the Junkie housing estates in Red Hill Civic and Northborne Ave for Apartment developments. Stick a the Junkies in a trailer park at Oaks estate and blow up the bridge at the crossing there.

Can’t disagree with that. The flats on Northborne, the Stuart Flats, the flats in Braddon and places like Strathgordon Court in Woden are on prime valuable land.

Just out of curiosity – why the angst about people owning 4WDs?

colourful sydney racing identity said :

cut funding to summernats and introduce a stupidity tax on 4WD owners.

+1

People that drive monster trucks get off lightly at the moment.

How about stimulating private business in the ACT with favourable conditions,, which can then taxed at a low to moderate level in the longer term, thus increasing the ACT govt’s income?

Me Antsy? Nope, I would probably agree with you if it wasn’t my home 🙂

Also, my apologies I didn’t take into account that the market rent wasn’t always this high in my calculations. Just seems for years it has been and I’m always confused when they cry broke. But, I am too! We suit each other.

Up The Duffy said :

Sell off all the horse paddocks around Curtin and Government House for residential development. The Arboretum would make a good suburb nice and close to the city too. Stick the trailer parks in Symonston in Oaks estate and sell off that prime land. And best of all sell all the Junkie housing estates in Red Hill Civic and Northborne Ave for Apartment developments. Stick a the Junkies in a trailer park at Oaks estate and blow up the bridge at the crossing there. If you are not a junkie and live in housing commission I don,t care no one has ever helped me out, try living in the real world.

With all that money raised and saved the ACT Government could pave the streets with gold.

Some of that isn’t too bad of an idea actually, the estates along Northbourne Ave should have been sold and demolished long ago. The major problem would be rehousing the junkies who live there.

Offering space in the adult’s hotel (AMC) to NSW is also a good idea, you could add space in the kiddy’s hotel (Bimberi), as that one also operates at about 1/4 full for the majority of the time too.

che said :

sounds like the Feds are cutting the ACT GST payout by 10%, so what 10% are the govt going to cut first?

The 10% will be essential services, cut backs in disability, old folks and other community funding, back room (non-hospital) health care funding etc. Probably some nice new taxes that are dressed up as something else in the budget too..

Hells_Bells74 said :

I do live in the real world thank you Up the Duffy. Do you really think I am costing them? … I have paid roughly on average in my almost 16 years here over $100,000 in rent.
…
Then the cincher is it’s on land worth over quarter of a million dollars, yeah, they’re doing alright. That’s the real world!

In the real world the same money that went into buying the land and building your house would have been worth several times more had it been used to pay down government debt, put in the bank, invested in infrastructure the whole community could use, or just never taken from taxpayers in the first place.

Sixteen years in public housing and you still need taxpayer support – it’s obviously a success!

Before you get antsy, I think my most offensive comment was this:

…all that library, community facilities, serrrrrrvices for the commuuuuuunity (wave hands in the air while saying) stuff is really about having things paid for by the Government that people feel should exist, but that they never actually use. When is the last time you went to a library?

Does anyone think that the reason the ACT is always broke is that taxes are too high, private enterprise and industry are crushed to death, and then they have to deal with people who can’t get jobs and are homeless by – hey guess what – raising taxes again.

** Maybe some carpets and cementing too and a lick of paint once.

I do live in the real world thank you Up the Duffy. Do you really think I am costing them? I pay rent, even heavily rebated rent can be around $4-8000 a year and full rent which a fair few of my friends all pay is around 15,000 a year. My house is a 1975 build and would’ve cost around $20-25,000 at max, (I base this on my mum’s place in Kaleen costing $30,000 private in ’77). I have paid roughly on average in my almost 16 years here over $100,000 in rent.

That is being conservative by far, as sometimes I’ve earned or my partners have earned and our rent is high then. I don’t wanna droll on about this. But I refuse to be bandied about in the private rental market and I have paid my dues, as did the people in this house did for the last 20 years before me, I’m sure this house is a terrific money spinner now (had stuff all maintaince done expect a wet area upgrade, scheduled for the area).

Then the cincher is it’s on land worth over quarter of a million dollars, yeah, they’re doing alright. That’s the real world!

They could lease rooms in the William McGonagall Centre (AMC) to NSW prisons.

Sell off all the horse paddocks around Curtin and Government House for residential development. The Arboretum would make a good suburb nice and close to the city too. Stick the trailer parks in Symonston in Oaks estate and sell off that prime land. And best of all sell all the Junkie housing estates in Red Hill Civic and Northborne Ave for Apartment developments. Stick a the Junkies in a trailer park at Oaks estate and blow up the bridge at the crossing there. If you are not a junkie and live in housing commission I don,t care no one has ever helped me out, try living in the real world.

With all that money raised and saved the ACT Government could pave the streets with gold.

* contract out TAMS

That’ll turn out well.

kakosi said :

Maybe sack local government and give the administration back to the Feds – there wasn’t a lack of funding when we didn’t have local government. Just saying…

and what, actually listen to the will of the ACT people, given we collectively said we don’t want local gov’t?

Na, they didn’t listen to us back then, why should they listen to us now?

charge $700 to register your bycicle.

Tanktrax said :

colourful sydney racing identity said :

… a stupidity tax on 4WD owners.

That alone would raise vast amounts of revenue… 🙂

Put a tax on stupid public servants more like it at the end they are the ones who stuff it all up.

Here’s one suggestion for future road maintenance in Canberra now that there’s no $$$$ in the budget …..

German village sells potholes: A cash-strapped village in eastern Germany has put its many potholes up for sale in a novel effort to finance the repair of its crumbling roads, the mayor said. People can buy a hole in Niederzimmern near Leipzig for 50 euros ($75). In return the authorities will repair it and put a personal message on top, Christoph Schmidt-Rose told local radio station MDR. “It’s about using a funny idea to find people prepared to help us sort out our roads” who can then “sort of feel like they own the hole in the road,” Mr Schmidt-Rose said. (Source: AFP)

I don’t think this argument should be about the work ethic of contractors versus permanents, there will no doubt be countless examples of good and bad in both.

The difference is the cost of outsourcing is huge – much bigger than first thought when the outsourcing trend started and is subject to a lot of rorting. Many previous in-house functions – IT, recruitment, mail sorting, courier, legal services are all costly and contractors particularly in IT often earn way above the standard PS rate.

To argue it is because they are more competent ignores the fact that many of these contractors were public servants until they found they could get more money coming back in via an IT company who charges high fees to pay for the higher wages and make a profit.

Madness.

Monkey0245 said :

I totally agree with Gungahlin Al

One option not yet suggested here is to look at how may contractors are employed by the ACT Government on a permanent basis. I’m certain many of these employees could be replaced with permanent employees, who are payed at standard public service rates, rather than the ‘standard public service rates + the hey I’m a contractor so pay me more’ they are currently getting…

This might also fit in nicely with that little document titles the Gershon Report which was released last year………

Yes……

Sadly the competence level of many permanent employees is significantly lacking, so simply replacing the effecive contractors (who were originally permanents before they were sacked) means that whatever functions they are looking after will simply end up breaking some time down the track.

But – thats a great plan, so that some other contractors can get an oportunity to come in and fix it up again. Whoot!!!

Funky1 said :

They can make savings by:

Cut the budget to put up these safety fences on all overpasses. Public safety shouldn’t be an issue.

Can anybody point to actual evidence of injuries caused bu kiddies throwing objects from overpasses IN THE ACT?

I know the kids in the western subburbs do it, but I was not aware of any issues here yet.

sounds like the Feds are cutting the ACT GST payout by 10%, so what 10% are the govt going to cut first?

It should come from the areas where people choose to avoid costs – education and health. There’s no excuse for not going completely private on both – it’s just that people would rather have the second car, the bid screen telly with foxtel, a tobacco habit, take-away more than once a month, a house with a spare bedroom – the only way most families can afford these things is by externalising the cost of education and health onto the community.

Maybe sack local government and give the administration back to the Feds – there wasn’t a lack of funding when we didn’t have local government. Just saying…

sounds like the Feds are cutting the ACT GST payout by 10%, so what 10% are the govt going to cut first?

Good luck!

colourful sydney racing identity said :

… a stupidity tax on 4WD owners.

That alone would raise vast amounts of revenue… 🙂

I totally agree with Gungahlin Al

One option not yet suggested here is to look at how may contractors are employed by the ACT Government on a permanent basis. I’m certain many of these employees could be replaced with permanent employees, who are payed at standard public service rates, rather than the ‘standard public service rates + the hey I’m a contractor so pay me more’ they are currently getting…

This might also fit in nicely with that little document titles the Gershon Report which was released last year………

I wish they’d get rid of some of the dead wood in my workplace. Paying close to 100k for staff who do bugger all all day except surf the net and then write really excellent quarterly reports about themselves about how fabulous they are doing their non-existent job is a waste of OUR money.

It’ll never happen.

They’d rather pay 100k for someone to do nothing all year than offer an evil, evil redundancy.

make the alexander mochonochie luxury motel a user-pays abode?

LOL !

Wanna save money, I say start with Centrelink !
– Cut off anyone who has been on unemployment benefits for longer than 6 months and hasn’t worked a single day in that 6 months.
– Reassess everyone on a disability. (I’m sorry but Chronic Fatigue is not an illness worth being on a disability pension for over 5 years)
– Fire 50% of the bloody useless and rude staff that work there.
– Save paper and cash by NOT sending out a million forms each week.
– Single parent income / Unemployed ? Well hang on, how come you claim you don’t work and your in a Government house and you want more money coz your broke but your house is full of plasma’s and game consoles and you pay for your children to go to private schools ??

Next – Go over to Medicare….
Why are things like plastic surgery available for rebates ? Why does anyone get to use the “Free” medical clinics.

Ok sorry…. must end rant, or I never will.

*sputter* Close schools? You know, I was going to award points for satire there, until I realised you were serious.

Pantsidiot, you say you’re not from around here… good, then, F8ck off back to where you came from.

Urchin, now – they get the points instead.

And Grapes of Sloth and smpc get points because they too show a good grasp of the necessities.

Lets hope it results in a reduction of the nuumber of “Gross Monuments To Sonic’s Ego”, aka public (f)artworks, that are imposed upon the city.

sell woden valley hospital to the little sisters called mary, or whatever their name is. surely they’ve the cash to stump up for new digs? and then you also save on gov’t funded abortions and other things the catholics don’t like, like fun…

tax lycra-wearing road users?

make the alexander mochonochie luxury motel a user-pays abode?

They can make savings by:

Cut any budget to try murder cases (they don’t happen here)

No need for a budget to paint that line down the middle of the multi-use (read cycle-only) pathways as no one pays attention to them anyway.

Cut the budget to put up these safety fences on all overpasses. Public safety shouldn’t be an issue.

Cut the budget for ministerial press releases. Who cares what they say, as they will probably do the opposite anyway.

And the biggy – not give themselves excessive payrises whenever they feel like it.

Just a few suggestions.
🙂

smpc said :

Grapes of Sloth said :

Stop the annual funding to the Summernats, Raiders and Brumbies?

Yes please. Or Summernats, at any rate.

YAWN………….

housebound said :

More amazing is how surprised the Government is that this could happen. It’s not like they didn’t know months ago. Where on earth was their contingency planning? Why wasn’t there a ‘Plan B’ in place? Why weren’t they hedging their bets in the budget planning process?

Fiscal and competence – two words that I want to see in the same sentence.

I think you will find most State governments were caught out by this, not just our local town council, I mean government.

housebound said :

More amazing is how surprised the Government is that this could happen. It’s not like they didn’t know months ago. Where on earth was their contingency planning? Why wasn’t there a ‘Plan B’ in place? Why weren’t they hedging their bets in the budget planning process?

Fiscal and competence – two words that I want to see in the same sentence.

I think they did. Wasn’t there a hoo haa a couple of weeks ago about the government hiring outside accountants to comb through the budget to find savings?

It will be the same old

Rates up
Car rego up
Parking up
Pay parking reintroduced at the hospitals
Ovals and sporting facilities rental costs to go up
More speed cameras
Less staff doing more.

When they get desperate, then Gungahlin Drive duplication will be cancelled and stay as one lane each way… Wasting another, oh, 100mill or so…

cut funding to summernats and intorduce a stupidity tax on 4WD owners.

housebound said :

More amazing is how surprised the Government is that this could happen. It’s not like they didn’t know months ago. Where on earth was their contingency planning? Why wasn’t there a ‘Plan B’ in place? Why weren’t they hedging their bets in the budget planning process?

Fiscal and competence – two words that I want to see in the same sentence.

Indeed Housebound. There never seems to be a Plan B for even the most obvious contingencies with the ACT Treasury.

As an example, after our Meet the Candidates meeting, we found Treasury briefing papers left behind by one of the ALP incumbents. Remember this was October just 1.5 weeks before the election. The advice was that the growing global economic concerns would not bother the ACT and no changes to the ALP’s election platform were deemed necessary! Clearly that was about as wrong as advice could possibly have gotten…

This time around, the lobbying for a bigger slice of the GST pie to NSW has been intense, the likelihood of it being listened too was high given the near-death experience the NSW ALP Government is having, and the rebuttal from the ACT Government (“the costs of running the nation’s capital are increasing due to decreased federal funding, exacerbated by 8 years of drought…” etc etc) was near invisible.

And yet again, contingency planning non-existent it seems.

Some would call this management-by-crisis.

A core issue behind the problem is that the ACT Government will not consider accruing a debt. They act like the local tradie who only buys tools when there is cash in the bank. Instead they should work the accrual accounting principles to defer some costs to future residents, given they will be the beneficiaries of the assets purchased using those debts.

It ain’t rocket science, and every other government in Australia uses it without fear. So why is the ACT the only one that is totally debt-averse?

At the very least, cop a deficit budget for a couple of years.

Grapes of Sloth said :

Stop the annual funding to the Summernats, Raiders and Brumbies?

Yes please. Or Summernats, at any rate.

More amazing is how surprised the Government is that this could happen. It’s not like they didn’t know months ago. Where on earth was their contingency planning? Why wasn’t there a ‘Plan B’ in place? Why weren’t they hedging their bets in the budget planning process?

Fiscal and competence – two words that I want to see in the same sentence.

haha, yeah public housing is a huge waste of space and money. providing people with affordable housing is a proven cause of poverty, that’s why australia is so rich and people are so keen to see house prices to the moon.

maybe they should have a public consultation on what should be cut. then they could pretend to care about the residents for an hour before taking whatever short-sighted measures they planned on taking initially.

bd84 said :

Your wish list sounds like it came off the top of your head with little thought or understanding of the ACT Government…,

I think she may have a good case to have the GST revenue decision reviewed by the Commonwealth anyway.

Your right: I’m not quite from around here. But you might be surprised about my knowledge of the ACT Government ;-o

Still don’t know why we have a target for public housing. Why does everyone in Canberra think that 10 per cent of Canberrans should live in poverty such that they justify 10 per cent of housing in Canberra being Public Housing? Maybe Public Housing just fuels the problem and should be closed?

GST revenue: The Feds are supposed to give us extra money to pay for our ‘roads paved with gold’ that they left us, but they stopped that a few years ago.

Grapes of Sloth said :

Hmm they’ve got to find $80million + in recurrent savings (or additional revenue) to cover the shortfall in GST. None of your suggestions comes close.

Which libraries do you want closed?

Which bus routes do you want halted?

Stop the annual funding to the Summernats, Raiders and Brumbies?

There’s not much fat in the TAMS budget – check their annual statements. Just about everything that can be contracted out has been – mowing, road sealing, bridge maintenance, etc, etc.

As for Tourism – which is in Chief Ministers Department – yes a complete waste of money, but that perpetual irritant Brendan Smythe will pipe up and say how outrageous it is to stop this form of corporate welfare.

And anything is better than having to listen to that twit Smythe – even going into serious deficit.

I think that’s a CMD problem generally. So many strategic plans and frameworks that never go anywhere.

I’d close the recently opened Kingston Library. That would be a great example of government waste (build a library then close it) and all that library, community facilities, serrrrrrvices for the commuuuuuunity (wave hands in the air while saying) stuff is really about having things paid for by the Government that people feel should exist, but that they never actually use. When is the last time you went to a library?

They need to do more on the revenue side I think. Maybe a courageous decision to extend land tax to all property including owner occupied housing (while cutting the rate), or having a flat payroll tax on all companies regardless of numbers of employees.

They could borrow Mr Rudd’s ‘Meat Axe’: he’s not using it.

why not buy another 20 or 30 pieces of public art then hope and pray that there might actually be people out there wanting to spend money to come here and see it.

failing that just spend money installing a petting zoo in parliament house and then ask the federal govt for a pay rise.

Any cuts will come out of things that are actually useful. All the wankery and pet projects will be untouched

Never a truer word spoken. Standope will once again piss away millions on public hospitals, libraries, multicultural festivals, and community consultation … and who pays? It sure as sh!t aint the bloodsuckers.

Your wish list sounds like it came off the top of your head with little thought or understanding of the ACT Government, though Katy’s statement of a “hiring freeze on all “non-essential” public servants” is probably just as bad. Given that there is no definition of the “non-essential”, I’m sure we could make up a case for staff to be essential for even the most minor position.

I think she may have a good case to have the GST revenue decision reviewed by the Commonwealth anyway.

Hmm they’ve got to find $80million + in recurrent savings (or additional revenue) to cover the shortfall in GST. None of your suggestions comes close.

Which libraries do you want closed?

Which bus routes do you want halted?

Stop the annual funding to the Summernats, Raiders and Brumbies?

There’s not much fat in the TAMS budget – check their annual statements. Just about everything that can be contracted out has been – mowing, road sealing, bridge maintenance, etc, etc.

As for Tourism – which is in Chief Ministers Department – yes a complete waste of money, but that perpetual irritant Brendan Smythe will pipe up and say how outrageous it is to stop this form of corporate welfare.

And anything is better than having to listen to that twit Smythe – even going into serious deficit.

Ian said :

One thing we can be sure of in the budget. Any cuts will come out of things that are actually useful. All the wankery and pet projects will be untouched.

Sadly, you are probably right. But, in the spirit of optimism, I wish for a razor gang to come along in the wake of Cormack, and that they mercilessly burn the administrators in ACT Health to the ground. Failing that, a pony.

One thing we can be sure of in the budget. Any cuts will come out of things that are actually useful. All the wankery and pet projects will be untouched.

Only the G-G? Awww shucks you could have been more ambitious and said POTUS. heh heh

Hang on. What is that whoop-whoop sound I hear?

I thought that much (most?) of TAMS is already contracted out… I’d be interested to know if that’s saved any money though.