$$$how me the Money – my response to the 2010-11 State Budget
Mr FERGUSON (Bass) – I want to give a response to this Budget from my point of view. It is my first budget in this House. Along with my colleague from Bass, Mr Wightman, I have just heard my first budget in this House – as have you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, now, there are quite a few people in the Chamber who are in the same category. I think you are outnumbered, Mr Green, and we defer to your experience to some degree.
I want to provide a response to this Labor-Greens Budget. It is the first such budget in a long, long time and I want to highlight some particular areas of need which I see as being unfulfilled. I want to describe in some general terms some of the thoughts and views that I have on education policy. I would also like, both from within this Chamber and outside, to invite community discussion and debate in that respect.
For any government the annual budget is its signature piece. It speaks most loudly about what you stand for and what you can do and are willing to do to fix problems that are in the community – to seize hold of opportunities that you sense and things that you wish to take advantage of. A budget will say what economic reforms are needed to help Tasmania to keep up with the rest of the world and to maintain, or even hopefully improve, our standard of living. A budget will say whether in government you will keep the promises that you made before an election. This, of course, goes to the very heart of integrity in politics because the voters of Tasmania get rare occasions to say what they think in a meaningful way and to direct government and democracy in Tasmania. These are called elections and they only come up every four years or thereabouts. That is why we as candidates and political parties and independents will go out into the political marketplace and we will sell our wares. We will say to people, ‘If you vote for me, this is what I stand for and this is what I would seek to do.’ Party leaders take it to a new level. They speak on behalf of all their team, whether it is the Liberal team, or team Bartlett or the Nick McKim Dream Greens team. You will say, ‘If you elect us to government these are not just the values and the ideas that we would strive for; this is what we will do.’ These are the action statements. Value statements are very important as I think everybody in this room will agree. I can say that confidently without wanting to overdo it. There are many people of genuine goodwill. It is one of the best things that I have observed coming into this place and I think that is excellent.
Values are very important but when people have these rare occasions to vote at an election not everyone, but almost everyone in the community, really values the opportunity to vote a government in or out. Sometimes they even enjoy it because they think, ‘Maybe I have just had enough of this lot. I want them out.’ Or, ‘I really think these guys are great and I want to get them in.’ Or, ‘This government is so good I would like to see them continue on.’
Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has a particular important need in their family, such as an educational need or a young person or child in their family with a disability who is not getting the support that they need to reach their potential, or someone in their family or a friend who is sick – they will be a highly motivated voter. In my inaugural speech, I spoke about a group of people who were fearful for their jobs and saw the election as their only chance to speak up.
This Budget tells me Labor believes that near enough is good enough or, if I may mangle an old song, that ‘three out of four ain’t bad’. I am old enough to remember that song, but mostly from the repeats on the radio. Anything goes, so long as it keeps you in power. The lesson for anybody in the community who wants to pay attention to happenings in Parliament this week and last week, is that the new rule for Tasmanian politics is this: it is okay to offer the world, it is okay to have a long list of promises and make them, ‘hand on heart’ to the voters, then, after the election, to change your language and to change what you said, and to boast, as the Treasurer did last Thursday night, that, ‘We have achieved meeting three out of four of our commitments. I think that is undignified, and pretty unfortunate.
How can it be that a government which is clearly in possession of every bit of Treasury advice – advice which is routinely denied to those who are not members of the Cabinet or a part of the Government – and also in possession and control of internal government information as to the state of the finances, would dare to make all sorts of promises to do this, to achieve that, to build that, to spend there, to invest in this infrastructure, only to say, just weeks later, that they will reassess everything?
This morning, the Minister for Resources said, ‘We want to work in consultation or collaboration with local government’, and, ‘We are absolutely keen to see this issue resolved in the long term’ – we are talking about the silt in the Tamar River. That is the sort of thing you normally say before an election. Now, I guess you are stuck with it – you are the minister. You did not make the promise, Minister, but you are landed with it now. The Government told the people of northern Tasmania that something would be done about the silt in the Tamar – there was a promise to spend more than $6 million addressing the issue. I accept that it might not be as straightforward a problem as you would like it to be, but there is nothing in the budget for the Tamar.
Mr Green – There’s $1.4 million in this Budget.
Mr FERGUSON – I accept your correction on that point – the maintenance dredging funds are there – but there is nothing in the Budget to address what was promised. Before the election, many of us, including myself, were frankly gobsmacked at the Premier’s spending spree, before the caretaker mode came into effect. A friend of mine – a Navy war veteran – sent me quite a funny e-mail. It referred to the spending by the Federal Government, but also alluded to our Premier’s spending. The e-mail said, ‘It is not really fair’ – bearing in mind he was an ex-Navy man – ‘to refer to the Labor Party as spending like drunken sailors’. He said that, unlike Labor, when he was a drunken sailor, when he ran out of money, he stopped spending it! But this Government kept spending. We had a pre-election spending spree and then we had a pre-election promises spree. Clearly the Government was so fearful of losing government – and the polls certainly pointed to this – that it decided to risk it all on the basis that if the spending actually paid off and got them back into government, it would be worth it, and that if it did not do the job, then it would probably become a problem for the Liberal Party. It would be someone else’s problem to have to mop up afterwards; that is certainly what people in the community are telling me.
When you consider the Labor members in this House, I would suspect that all 10 out of 10 of our Labor members would say, ‘Great Budget’. They would probably even say, ‘Out of a score of 10 I will give it 10 points’. It may not be quite the case that the 15 members that make up the Labor-Greens coalition would all agree exactly in that way, but how could 10 out of 10 give 10 out of 10 points to a budget that delivers three out of four of your promises. I think the public will be very concerned about this. If anybody wanted to make a comparison with a former Federal government that came to power and used words such as ‘core’ and ‘non-core promises’, I would say that is a fair enough point to make and I would probably expect to hear it. In response I would say, ‘Look at the context. An opposition was coming into government and found that the finances were not as they were presented to be’, which then in later years saw the introduction of the Charter of Budget Honesty. However, in the recent election we saw a government holding onto power knowing exactly the state of the finances. No wonder our Leader, Will Hodgman, would today address this House and criticise the Labor Party for the way it has abandoned its principles before the election.
If anyone wants to make the claim that this Budget is responsible, then that is fair enough too. It probably is a responsible budget in the broad and in context, but the community will be looking at this document and taking a different view. They will say, ‘We were given a set of promises, whether it was health or education or our local roads’. I know that the people of the north-east will be wondering, ‘How is the Tasman Highway going?’, because it did not make it into the Budget although it did make it into the pre-election spending promises.
Our budget response this year demonstrates that were we in government now – and we are not; I am not bellyaching about that, but it is an important principle to make – not three-quarters of our promises would have been funded and delivered; it would have been four quarters. Together with that, there would have been a better budget bottom line.
Mr Best – There’s no detail.
Mr FERGUSON – I will send you the e-mail later on. It was released today at two o’clock.
I am very pleased with many aspects of the Budget that concern education. I am not going to stand here today and be negative about everything; nobody is all bad, just as none of us is all good. There are some exceptions that I will explore but today I will choose mainly to select the positive aspects and indicate our support for them. Much of what the Government is seeking to do in this Budget is praiseworthy and I have no problem saying so. I am pleased that the education budget appears to have been largely maintained from last year, although a large proportion of the Budget is clearly a passing on of Federal funds as part of the BER, so some analysis is needed before we dismiss entirely the possibility that recurrent investment in education, particularly at the school level, is entirely stable. I know that my colleague, the shadow treasurer, said that in 2009-10 education is expected to received $1.384 billion in total funding from the Consolidated Fund, whereas in 2010-11 education will receive $1.34 billion, which represents a cut of $44 million.
There is some evidence, though, that the education budget has shrunk by tens of millions of dollars, with no provision at all for expected cost increases to the agency. In particular, I draw your attention to this question: has the Government made any special provision for extra costs arising out of payment of SEO availability allowances, which has been reported in the news, and very importantly the upcoming round of negotiations with the union regarding teachers’ salaries. If indeed a nexus is achieved again, there seems little scope in this Budget to meet the additional costs that would then arise. That is a question I would flag today as important. If a salary nexus is achieved and the Government needs to outlay more funds, then I would be very concerned if they are somehow expected to come from within existing budgets.
I have no problem with, in fact I pay tribute to the Government for the Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap initiative. It is a good initiative. It may not succeed entirely in everything that it seeks to do. Very few government programs ever do, but I appreciate the initiative. I note that the Government, again, over-promised before the election. In document after document I kept seeing $12 million -
Mr O’Byrne – Over-promised – we’re the only ones, you reckon?
Mr FERGUSON – There you go again; you have just walked in and you are going to be like that again. Well, you have missed much of what I had to say which was -
Mr O’Byrne – I have been watching on television.
Mr FERGUSON – I am glad you made it. You missed much of what I said, which was in fact pointing out that there is plenty in the Budget that I have no difficulty supporting. If you do not mind my saying, I have no problem standing here today and saying so, which I am not sure would have been the case were our roles reversed. However, when you make a promise and you drain them of their vote to get into power then you should deliver what you promise. You really should and that is something you should not disagree with. Instead in this Budget we have $10 million. I support the initiative and I will be seeking assurances from the minister that the funds will be wisely and carefully used so that we can get the best value from what are obviously the available funds. It is $10 million over four years and unfortunately just 10 per cent of that is in the coming financial year. The whole initiative was to extend the program into high schools as well. I support it because this does hold the possibility that we can lift the fortunes of the lowest achieving students in our lowest performing communities.
We need to be careful how we measure the performance. As policy-makers we need to be careful that it is not absolute individual results of students and school communities that matter the most. The performance that matters most to me is the difference that education has made to a child or to a school community over a period. We would like to see that become a mainstream part of our rhetoric here in politics. It is certainly the case that the relationship between SES and school achievement is a strong one. I would ask the question: which one causes the other? It is probably the case that they are one and the same statistic. Each one is causing the other and, in fact, having a reinforcing effect. We do have to do better. I have been briefed on this aspect of our statewide performance and the statistics are quite sobering. You recognise that for many young people who have been raised in a particular social environment it really is not on that they should have their life chances predetermined. It should not be on the basis of the way in which they have come into the world and the community they happen to live in. That is why I support this initiative, but it will come with some accountability. For the Government and the Opposition there is a great role here for backbenchers because it is very important that we keep our departments’ pencils sharp and we ask them, ‘Well, what are you actually doing with these funds because do not expect to come back for more money in the future if you have not delivered on what you promised in the first place’.
The A-Team has been such a small aspect to departmental budgets but it has occupied a lot of our time in this place, out of this place, in the media and certainly in the parent community. I think that is interesting, partly because it demonstrates the great value of this very small pilot program and the benefits it brought to the community and the families involved. I will not rehearse it all again, but I did speak in this place on the adjournment last week and I raised some fears. Sadly, here I go again, I shot my mouth off and congratulated the minister, only to find later on that things were not as they had been put across. I am pretty disappointed by that, I have to say. I feel, until the information I have asked for is forthcoming, as if I have been conned. Even as it was, when I looked at the budget papers it looked like $100 000 because it said 0.1. In fact, on further investigation just $85 000 was allocated to the A-Team – as if that is going to keep it going. Weirdly, it was from the Health and Human Services budget, so I am not sure what is going on there, as it is an Education department program and at $85 000 it is just 7 per cent.
Ms O’Connor – It relates to children with disabilities.
Mr FERGUSON – That is great, but the A-Team program arose from Learning Services North and is being migrated into Distance Education Tasmania, so although I have no problem where the money comes from -
Ms O’Connor – We administer autism services in Tasmania through the Department of Human Services, so you don’t want a silo -
Mr FERGUSON – Yes, Minister, I take the interjection; I have no problem with where the money comes from or where it is appropriated, but it is just 7 per cent of what we all agreed was needed. So when I raised this publicly -
Ms O’Connor – I’d say it’s a work in progress.
Mr FERGUSON – I hope it is, I really do, because as I was saying, it is just 7 per cent of what we all agreed was needed. I believe the Greens matched the Liberals’ costing and promise of $1.3 million – correct me if I am wrong. When I raised this publicly, the minister shot back a response and said that future funding is secure in Distance Education’s budget, so I would just like to say, ‘Show me the money’.
Ms O’Connor – We did get an extra $1 million into autism specialist services in Tasmania.
Mr FERGUSON – Yes, that is a separate issue. Show me the money. There is just no sign in the Budget, and if you want -
Ms O’Connor – I showed you the money.
Mr FERGUSON – If the minister wants to shut me up, just tell us what page it is on, but at this point in time I can assure you and this House, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the autism community are pretty concerned about where it is going. Last week I paid tribute to the efforts of my colleague, Mr Booth, and I just feel as though we have been dudded. These are unanswered questions.
Mr Booth – If we have, that will be resolved on the Floor.
Mr FERGUSON – Excellent. Let us see about that; we are not the Government, we are not able to bring money bills.
Mr Booth – It is a hung parliament, though.
Mr FERGUSON – Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to make a comment on the Cosgrove High School specialist sport school for sports. An amount of $18 million was allocated. I do not want to sound as if I am opposing the initiative because I am not, but I have a few concerns about this. I really do wonder at the decision-making that went behind this commitment. It is even bigger than the cost of building a whole new school at Port Sorell, so it is quite perplexing.
I am told by the community that no-one was more surprised at the time of that announcement than the school community itself. They had not asked for it and it was not a priority. As a Liberal I am very enthusiastic about the idea of schools taking on specialist niche areas. I think that is excellent and there should be more of it, but this particular example just does not show the kind of evidence that the Premier often speaks about when he says that he wants evidence-based approaches, so we will be watching that one very closely.
With regard to the pathway planners, I am not seeing any evidence of progress here. The Liberals have taken a strong position on this and prior to the election we made commitments to support up to 35 new pathway planners in our schools and colleges, which has provided and could in future provide great career and vocational learning pathways advice and support to our students. As to the provision of psychologists and speech therapists, I think that was finally something that my predecessor, Mrs Napier, the Greens and the Labor Party came to some common ground on, so it is great to see that in the Budget again. We do want to see the benefits. Previously I have said, ‘Show me the money’; in this case you have shown me the money, so show me the benefits and let us see how these resources can be carefully and wisely used.
I made a comment already earlier about the SEO availability allowance. There is nothing in this Budget to specifically deal with this potential problem. That is not a criticism but an observation, given that it goes back for apparently 30 years and has only recently been picked up, so it is quite an astonishing bit of history for all of us to have learned. If people have believed that they are entitled to a payment and they have been underpaid I just want to say that the claim should be properly tested and if found owing should be paid, but not at the expense of any school budget. That is why on the day, if there is a day coming where the minister will say that there has been some allocation made, I would like to ensure that that is made at the same time as a new appropriation or some reasonable saving somewhere else in government.
On Tasmania Tomorrow, I do not have a lot of time to comment, but what a lot of rubbish I have heard, particularly over the last few weeks from the Tasmanian Greens, including today’s restatement that their policy has not changed. I find that astonishing. The Tasmanian Greens and the Liberals went to the last election with policies which differed specifically with regard to whether or not to restore the old TAFE. Apart from that, our policies were very close. The Labor Party was being very stubborn on this point and refused to give ground. We went to the election and at the earliest opportunity the Tasmanian Liberals tabled a bill. I met with Mr O’Halloran, the member for Braddon, on 11 May to brief him on the bill and in that meeting Mr O’Halloran asked me a range of questions, including the status of former TAFE students, teachers and courses that had been migrated to the Polytechnic.
I expressed to him then that, although we favoured this being handled by the Skills Institute, I was quite open-minded on that point and would welcome further discussions with him. On the day that I tabled the bill in this place, I issued a media release inviting the Greens and the Government and, indeed, the community to provide feedback on any shortcomings that they saw in the bill or improvements that they felt they could make. Strangely, I found with the benefit of hindsight, that I never heard back from Mr O’Halloran. I never received any comment, feedback or suggestions and it was quite clear, looking back now, that it was all a bit of a ruse and that the deal was to work with the Government. That is fine, but now we are interested in the future.
I am quite concerned now that we have lost so much time with regard to implementing the changes that need to occur, and implementation is the key issue. I know the Greens have made an important point, and I would have to agree, that the implementation is very important, but the implementation plan ought to have been constructed at the same time as the negotiations between the Greens and the Government with regard to the changes that were agreed upon. So that is my concern. I am concerned about lost time. I am concerned that now we have only six months before the start of the 2011 school and college year and I am pretty worried about that. I want to play a constructive role if I can but I suspect I will not because the opportunity will not be there. Nonetheless, that is the responsibility of the Government and given that today the minister outlined the role of the task force and I think she mentioned something like 14 or 15 parties that are part of that taskforce, including a number of boards, they will have to hire a convention centre for their first meeting. So they are some of my concerns right up-front and the Labor-Greens Government, not just the minister, will have to be accountable on that particular point.
With regard to my electorate of Bass, it is great to see some extra money for palliative care. I have been banging on about this for a long time and I have also been a member of the Northern Hospice and Palliative Care Support Group. We need to make sure that this extra money is used for real publicly-funded beds that we can see, not hidden in the acute or sub-acute system. With regard to the LGH funding in general, during the election Labor committed $130 million over five years for around 260 more staff for the LGH. That is fantastic, but in this Budget in the coming financial year there is just $5 million that will be spent on staff and less than half of the proposed $130 million has been delivered. This morning or earlier this afternoon the minister said that the Budget ‘makes a start in fulfilling this commitment’, which I find really dissatisfying.
Madam Deputy Speaker, there are many issues that we can go into and they are all important to all of us. My response today touches on just a few of them. I do want to say today that, in my role as shadow minister for education and skills, I am really delighted to be able to play a useful role in this area. It is something I feel very strongly about as part of Tasmania’s future. I know that is a point that there is no disagreement on in this place. I want to see improved educational outcomes at school. I want to see better retention of all our college leavers, wherever they go to college. I want to see better support for special needs students and I want to explore the role of specialist schools and to work with the community in seeing if we can come up with a better way to support students who have a disability. I want to pursue greater autonomy and more accountability for teacher performance and I want to pursue student development. We need excellence in our schools. We need to allow specialisation to take place and we need to give schools a level of trust that comes with a level of obligation back to the taxpayer.
With those thoughts I indicate that I will be raising many of these issues during the Estimates process and look forward hopefully to being assured on many of those matters and raising issues of concern if need be.
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