“Expenditure on interest is predicted in the outyears to account for 9 per cent of the budget. Hiding this from the public has infuriated crossbench MLA Fiona Carrick,” writes political columnist MICHAEL MOORE. 

Fiona Carrick has really hit her stride as an Independent MLA. She is really delivering on her electoral promises of pursuing transparency and accountability. 

Her responses to the government’s appalling budget are insightful and telling.

The Murrumbidgee MLA has exposed the government’s failure to present a fair and accurate account of expenditure in the most basic area. Ms Carrick has exposed just how shonky is the diagrammatic representation of taxation expenditure as circulated on our rates notices.

That is not all. Her detailed analysis of the budget reveals an extraordinary effort to ensure the government is held accountable over the “structural challenges” that the current budget has failed to address. According to Ms Carrick: “It is a story of ongoing and larger deficits, increasing borrowings and increasing interest payments, accompanied by routinely unrealistic forecasts”.

Her perspective is that “the ACT government’s latest budget reveals deepening fiscal vulnerabilities that demand greater transparency and a strategy to reduce the increasing debt”.

I was incorrect in a previous column where I indicated that Ms Carrick was committed to supporting the government’s budget. She did not make this commitment, and without it she has more room to move. 

This is illustrated by willingness to push “the government to agree to a number of changes to how the budget is presented that will provide greater granularity and transparency”.

She has used her position as an independent at the Estimates Committee hearings to pursue the government on a range of issues – but particularly Treasurer Chris Steel on the overview of the budget. 

She explained that “Treasury officials confirmed that interest payments on government debt are not included in the information on government spending presented on rates notices”.

Expenditure on interest is predicted in the outyears to account for 9 per cent of the budget. Hiding this from the public has infuriated the crossbench MLA. 

Even more infuriating for her is the response from Treasurer Steel who argued in the Estimates Committee that “he had no plans to provide greater transparency about interest on rates notices”. 

Even more exasperating was his further response. He thinks it is enough for all Canberrans to find it themselves, arguing “it’s in the budget papers”. Were it not for a thorough effort by MLAs in Estimates Committee hearings, most of us would remain ignorant of the attempts of the government to hide this fiscal challenge.

As Ms Carrick points out: “By excluding the fastest growing item in the budget – interest payments on government debt – the government is not giving ratepayers the full picture”. 

Clearly this attempt to hide the growing interest debt is intentional. The government has already lost its Standard & Poor’s AAA+ credit rating, and is now on “negative watch”.

As part of her expose on the deteriorating budget situation, Fiona Carrick points out that the last time the ACT had a surplus budget was under Katy Gallagher. 

From the time Andrew Barr became treasurer, the ACT budget situation has declined. This decline means that the government is always looking for more ways to raise money and to slug the residents of the ACT.

Looking beyond the current budget year provides even less confidence that the budget is likely to come into surplus in the foreseeable future with total borrowings forecast to reach $22 billion by 2028-29.

The challenge with that level of borrowing is the cost to the recurrent budget that, in turn, has a major impact on delivery of services such as health and education.

The $22 billion will cost close to a billion dollars a year from the recurrent budget. This is the information that the government resists placing on rates notice.

In an insightful comment Ms Carrick explained why this matters: “These financial decisions have opportunity costs – things we miss out on because money is tied up elsewhere, like in paying interest:

• Less funding for services like schools, hospitals, and housing.
• Higher taxes or reduced services may be needed in the future.
• Limited flexibility to respond to emergencies or new priorities.
• Intergenerational equity – future generations pay for today’s spending which limits their options”.

While the Liberals are busy with their infighting, it is refreshing to have such an insightful, intelligent and informative analysis of the single most important aspect of government – the budget.

Michael Moore is a former member of the ACT Legislative Assembly and an independent minister for health. He has been a political columnist with “CityNews” since 2006.

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