Mr BAYLEY question to TREASURER, Mr ABETZ
Throughout your career you have been consistent in pursuing sweeping public sector cuts. As federal employment minister you advocated for and delivered job cuts across Australia. After your election last year, you made it clear it was your mission here too. Your consistency on job cuts will continue in this Budget, but unfortunately you have become somewhat hypocritical on debt.
In your inaugural speech here you described leaving debt legacies for the next generation as ‘intergenerational theft and selfishness writ large.’ You said, ‘all government priorities will need to be set based on genuine necessity.’ Yet here you are prioritising a single project that will add $2 billion to our small state’s existing enormous debt. Treasurer, how can you possibly support the stadium given your strong views on debt? Do you believe a third AFL stadium is a genuine necessity, and what happened to your sense of responsibility for future generations?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I commend the honourable member and recommend to everybody in this Chamber and elsewhere to read my first speech, and I congratulate him for doing so. I also indicate to him that there might be some other speeches I may have given, and if you have some spare time, I would say to the member for Clark, you can bury yourself in those as well.
In relation to my consistency in public life, thank you for acknowledging that. I am of the view, in general terms, that small government is the best government. I happen to believe that the average punter knows how to spend their money a bit better than Hobart or Canberra does, and therefore I try to keep everything within reasonable parameters.
In relation to the stadium, I simply make this point, and the Premier did it exceptionally well: the stadium will be of assistance for a pathway to prosperity for this state. There is no doubt that this is going to be intergenerational investment. I know what the polls tell us, but interestingly enough, in the younger demographic in particular there is huge support, so when this government goes about building the infrastructure for the future, we are in fact doing that which the younger cohort within our community is expecting and wanting us to do. They know and realise that over the lifetime of a stadium that might go for about 50 years or so, they will be a contribution that they will be making over the lifetime of the stadium, and there will be all those benefits from the stadium, the economic enabling. Even when the Hobart City Council commissioned a report, it found that there would be $170-something millions of extra economic activity within the Hobart City Council boundaries. What does the Lord Mayor say, Madam Speaker? –
Dr Woodruff – It’s only going to last for 30 years and we will be paying a debt for 100.
The SPEAKER – Order, honourable Leader of the Greens, allow the Treasurer to answer the question please.
Mr ABETZ – Ignore that because it’s inconvenient, so the Lord Mayor says, ‘Slide that aside, it’s inconvenient.’ Well, we happen to believe that this stadium will not only be an economic enabler, it will be a social enabler, a cultural enabler, and it will provide an iconic gateway to our capital city.
This is going to be transformative and over the forward Estimates, the $375 million that we will be putting in by way of an equity injection, is, in general terms, 37 days, 38 days of health expenditure in this state.
The SPEAKER – The honourable Treasurer’s time has expired.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Mr BAYLEY – A supplementary question, Speaker?
The SPEAKER – I will hear the supplementary question.
Mr BAYLEY – The Treasurer talked about the pathway to prosperity, but Treasury advice was clear that you can’t grow yourself out of the current problem. I asked the Treasurer about his responsibility to future generations, given his speech and calling debt legacies ‘intergenerational theft and selfishness writ large,’ so I ask again, what happened to your sense of responsibility to those future generations?
The SPEAKER – Honourable Treasurer.
Mr ABETZ – Speaker, what the honourable member needs to understand is the difference between operational expenditure and capital expenditure. Capital expenditure and making an investment in capital –
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – Order.
Mr ABETZ – is order in general terms, good expenditure. Having to borrow for that, as most of us do or have done for our house mortgage, is similar. But if you have to borrow for the operational expenditure of your household, then you’ve got some issues. That is what we have recognised. What the honourable member is doing – and I know he’s intelligent enough to know the difference – for political purposes, I suspect, he’s trying to conflate operational expenditure with capital expenditure. He knows that to be disingenuous and he knows better.
