[Greens-Media] Media release: Mike Baird's shiny things budget

[John Kaye]

Mike Baird's shiny things budget

Media release: 18 June 2013

The NSW budget will deliver plenty of projects for the Premier to launch in time for the 2015 state election while delivering savage cuts to the public sector workforce that will impact on communities across NSW, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.

Dr Kaye said: "This shiny new things budget will give the Premier the opportunity to don a hard hat during the election campaign but it will leave most households much worse off.
"Treasurer Mike Baird's budget slashes $19 billion out of the public service over the next six years.

"He might call it 'efficiency dividends and labour expense caps' but the reality is fewer services delivered by a smaller number of increasingly over-stretched public servants.

"Every dollar cut out of the public sector in today's budget will cost the state dearly in the long term.

"Critical front line services like TAFE are under the knife with a massive reduction in both spending on employees and student numbers.

"Meanwhile the O'Farrell government has increased its subsidies to private training companies by an immense 65 percent, signalling the beginning of the wholesale privatisation of the skills sector.

"TAFE is being abandoned as part of the overall increasing privatisation of the education budget.

"While the total education budget is set to grow at 3 percent, if the funding of private providers of schooling and vocational education is removed, the budget increase falls behind inflation at 1.7 percent.

"It is only the private sector that is seeing the big growth in Mike Baird's budget.

"The fiscal impacts of the privatisation of electricity and ports on the forward estimates are beginning to be seen in declining dividends and tax equivalent payments.

"Transferring these assets to the private sector is a gift to the Commonwealth government that now collects all of the company tax.

"Pushing ahead with the sale of the port of Newcastle may provide a short term boost to the Treasurer's budget but it will lock Newcastle into exporting the dirty cargo that Sydney doesn't want to handle.

"This is a dud deal for the people of Newcastle and the state as a whole.

"Privatising the port of Newcastle will flog off a valuable income stream and squander the opportunity to develop the region's capacity to manufacture high tech exports.

"Privatisation will see Newcastle become the backwater of the NSW export trade. The private owners will seek to centralise the lucrative container cargo at Port Botany and let Newcastle handle the dirty coal exports.

"The O'Farrell government has abandoned the delivery of crucial public services to build things the Premier can open in the lead up to the election.

"Driven by an obsession with budget surpluses and an inability to stand up to the rating agencies, this budget will see communities across NSW forced to dig into their own pockets for services the state will no longer be able to provide," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

John Kaye
Greens NSW MP

P: (02) 9230 2668 | F: facebook.com/john.kaye.mlc<http://www.facebook.com/john.kaye.mlc> | T: @johnkgreens<twitter.com/johnkgreens> | W: www.johnkaye.org.au<http://www.johnkaye.org.au>
Mail: Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

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