The ‘take your pick’ Buffet Budget presented to States members by Policy & Resources this week is truly a disservice to all who reluctantly came around to if not supporting, then not opposing tax reform and the introduction of a goods and services tax last week.
For if members, as a majority surely will, plump for Budget ‘Lite’ next month, the voters will have every right to feel cheated.
They may have reluctantly accepted that GST was necessary to maintain investment in infrastructure that the States has made such a poor show of keeping up in recent years.
They did not accept that they would be writing a blank cheque to cover all the unnecessary desk jobs, flights of fancy and nice-to-haves that deputies can now be queueing up to pursue.
And after votes on Friday to release the spending handcuffs they had agreed in July, followed by this pathetically weak optional budget restraint being proposed yesterday, it’s frightening to see how we might have all been duped. The writing is on the wall.
Deputy Andy Sloan jokes elsewhere in today’s newspaper that P&R has given an ‘Inderesque’ finger to the public. But it’s worse than that. It’s two.
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