By Lara Pullin
The ACT Liberal chief minister and treasurer, Kate Carnell, delivered a few more blows to the average worker in the 1998-99 budget on June 23.
Carnell touted the budget as a vision for the "clever, caring capital", but increased fees for public transport, public housing, electricity and car registration will leave the average person well out of pocket. The only caring in this budget is for business and profitability.
In previous budgets, the government managed to axe the long-standing free dental care program for children in the ACT, blow up (literally) the major public hospital and slash funding to a range of community services and government programs — while it handed money to business. This budget is more of the same.
To add insult to injury, a hefty parliamentarians' pay rise included 16% for this year alone for Carnell, her ministers and ALP leader Jon Stanhope. Carnell's $25,000 rise brings her annual pay to $131,550.
Carnell said she had no control over the rise, awarded by an independent remuneration tribunal decision.
But according to the Community and Public Sector Union ACT government section secretary, Tim Gooden, Carnell and the government initiated the pay review and made submissions arguing for a rise, and the tribunal included three former government advisers — one of whom had been forced to resign from the inquiry into the botched Canberra Hospital explosion because of his close relationship to the chief minister.
Carnell also awarded ACT senior bureaucrats a big pay rise. A number of her department heads now earn more than she does.
According to Gooden, many ACT public servants are now furious over the government's offer of only a 1.3% pay increase over three years, with trade-offs. The offer includes job losses, loss of conditions and non-union enterprise agreements.
A rise of 1.3% is not enough to cover even the rises in cost of living over three years, let alone the harsh budget increases.
Gooden said that ACT public servants are set to take action, especially because jobs are to be axed: 120 from the Electricity and Water Corporation, about 70 from Education (and more if threatened preschool closures go ahead), plus other jobs cut by managers as the full effect of competitive tendering for public services comes into effect.
Many taxpayers are suggesting that parliamentarians donate the pay rises back to the public purse, if the ACT government's budget situation is as tight as it claims. Some slugs in the budget are:
- Motor vehicle registration: this increase has caused most outcry. Carnell tried to disguise the hike in fees as aimed at rewarding owners of vehicles that reduce greenhouse emissions. She also tried to conceal the increases by focusing on the 100% fee reduction for Centrelink pensioners. But Canberra is still the most expensive city in Australia for a pensioner to register a car — with insurance and road rescue taxes still to be paid.
The new fee structure penalises vehicle owners according to the weight of the vehicle, not according to degree or type of fuel consumption. Greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption have less to do with the weight of the vehicle than the engine capacity/design and fuel types. Most vehicle owners are being taken for a ride on a fake-environmental, regressive tax hike.
- Bus fares: a new zoning system will raise school bus fares by up to 300% — up $88 per year, per child, per zone crossed. Adult daytime off-peak fares were increased 75%, from $4 to $7.
- Public rent: after recent changes undermining security of tenancy, public tenants face a rent hike to 25% of their gross income, up from 21-24% currently. ACT Housing already earns $48.6 million per year from rent and other sources.
A recent Smith Family report found that 21% of gross income going to rent meant that many public tenants were paying up to 46% of net income in rent and going without education or clothing for children, skimping on food and not using heating (despite the regular sub-zero temperatures).
Waiting lists continue to rise for dental care, health care, housing and support services for victims of domestic violence or other crimes. Compensation to crime victims is to be tightened. Road trauma victims' assistance has been de-funded.
The government has made no funding provision for the new round of enterprise bargaining for public servants, or for community services, despite a new social and community services award.
Gooden asks: "How about leaving off the business welfare — some $100 million across a range of programs? Stop the erosion of public spending, and explain why the ACT has youth unemployment of 49%, yet there is not one public service position in ACT government services occupied by a person under 21.
"That is the sort of thing this budget should have addressed, along with the quality of life for workers, which continues to be eroded."