Ms O’CONNOR – Treasurer, when Will Hodgman was elected Premier in 2014 within three months, he came back in with a fully formed state budget. You had three months or more to form an actual budget that dealt with the PEFO (Pre-Election Financial Outlook).
There are lots of blank lines in the out-years of your Budget. It feels like it’s an act of subterfuge, basically, to get through the stadium vote, and then next May the real pain will be delivered and subsequently felt.
Why didn’t you prepare a fully formed budget? Was there any political consideration in your mind at all when you decided to bring in an interim one?
Mr ABETZ – I was waiting to see how long it would take for the stadium conspiracy to be raised –
Ms O’CONNOR – What’s the conspiracy?
Mr ABETZ – That we have deliberately withheld information in relation to the Budget. As I indicated to you, you can do the maths, I had from 20 August to 15 September to lock away the figures.
CHAIR – David Crean did it in 1998 in exactly the same amount of time, with a change of government, I might add.
Mr ABETZ – If I can answer, I don’t know what David Crean may or may not have done in 1998; I do know the advice I was given by Treasury, very strongly and firmly, was that they need exactly two months –
Ms O’CONNOR – To do what, sorry?
Mr ABETZ – To lock away the figures for quality assurance, et cetera, after the Budget Cabinet. From 15 September to 6 November was an exceptionally tight timeline for Treasury officials, and to the best of my ability, that is what I was advised, and I had no reason to doubt that advice. When I said, ‘Can we make it a week shorter, with a lot of hard work?’, it was agreed and, hence, we got a budget on 6 November rather than 13 November.
Mr SWAIN – Treasurer, if I may, I note that the context was that we had a supply bill in place, and the supply bill, of course, has estimates of expenditure that go through to the end of December, but we were also very conscious of the need to bring in a proper full budget in advance of the supply bill coming to an end.
Ms O’CONNOR – The Budget that we have has no sign of the explicit policy choices that were recommended in the PEFO, so it’s hard not to form the view that this Budget is a sort of ‘softly, softly’ approach to get us through the stadium vote. Perhaps you could point us to any explicit policy choice in the Budget that leads us towards fiscal sustainability?
Mr ABETZ – The stadium issue was never discussed and never considered –
Ms O’CONNOR – That’s a worry.
Mr ABETZ – As part of the Budget timetable.
Ms O’CONNOR – Oh, I see.
Mr ABETZ – Your view on the stadium is well known, but we believe that the stadium is a very important part, as an economic enabler for our state, and that is why we want to see it progress; but I can assure you that the stadium considerations had nothing to do with the timetable for the Budget.
Ms O’CONNOR – Are you able to tell the committee what your projection is for public sector job cuts over the forward Estimates from May?
Mr ABETZ – We are looking at right-sizing the public service, and that will be 2800 public service jobs that we are looking at to see whether they will need to be refilled when and as they fall vacant.
Ms O’CONNOR – On that point, are we likely in May next year to see a different set of numbers for public-sector job cuts from what we’ve got in the interim Budget, given that Treasury’s advice to you in the PEFO was that you’re going to have to make some explicit policy choices, including potentially raising state revenue? What sort of different numbers are you looking at for May, in broad terms – just to give us some sign, at this point?
Mr ABETZ – I’m not going to speculate other than to say we have indicated the pathway that we want to take to ensure that we reach a balanced budget, and in those circumstances decisions will need to be made, and one of those decisions is in relation to the size of the public service, keeping in mind 46 per cent of the Budget goes towards public service salaries, so that is a fair whack of the Budget. If you want to right-size the budget, it stands to reason that the size of the public service will need to be right-sized as well, given the substantial proportion that it takes.
Ms O’CONNOR – Just the last question on this line of questioning, we heard before from Mr Swain that some of what’s impacted the Budget to date has been flood events and unusual events. You’ve projected a little over a $5 million surplus in this interim Budget in the out years. Do you agree that it’s meaningless really because we’re in an age of accelerating climate change and those extreme weather events are likely to more increasingly impact on budget sustainability and spending?
Mr ABETZ – The impact of that which you talk about, I’m not –
Ms O’CONNOR – Can you not say the words? Say ‘climate change’ – see how it goes.
Mr ABETZ – Can I finish the sentence without interruption, but I’m sure the Chair has noted and would not seek to encourage? The matters that you note are part-and-parcel of government advice through ReCFIT and that gets fed into all the government agencies.
Mr SWAIN – I did say a flood event I should have, if I could correct it, have said storm event.
