Chris Steel, Rachel Stephen-Smith, Andrew Barr and Yvette Berry when the new cabinet was announced in November 2024. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
If ACT Treasurer Chris Steel is indeed Andrew Barr’s protege and his heir apparent, you have to ask what the Boy Wonder did to deserve the ungodly mess that is the Territory Budget, gifted last year by the Chief Minister.
It’s worse than a shambles. It’s a pooh storm of Biblical proportions. The Eleventh Plague.
And he started with such high hopes.
When Barr announced his new Cabinet on 7 November last year, and that he would be relinquishing the Treasury portfolio as many said he should have done years earlier, it was obvious that Steel was Barr’s chosen replacement. And he was full of vim and vigour. Eager for the challenge.
Mr Steel stressed several times that day the importance of responsible budget management, particularly around Labor’s commitments on infrastructure, housing, cost of living, health and jobs. What we might call the ‘bread and butter of government’.
“We’ve got a significant agenda there and responsible management of the budget is critical to enable that to be delivered,” he said.
It didn’t take long for the wheels to wobble. Now they’re falling off.
First, it was revealed soon after the election that (let’s be frank) we were lied to about the state of the books, especially when it came to the Health portfolio.
On 30 January 2025, Region reported that “An unanticipated surge in demand at the ACT’s hospitals has forced the government to inject an extra $227.3 million to maintain services”.
Less than a month later, the Greens estimated that the health Budget shortfall was actually $332 million, $105 million more than first reported because “[the government] gambled on getting extra money from the Federal Government, and lost”.
They added: “This is no way to manage a health system.”
They’re not wrong.
But it also exposed that it’s no way to run a government, because we later found out that while the blackhole was “unanticipated”, it was not unknown to Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith.
She knew the system was running on fumes before we went to the polls, but she maintained she wasn’t obliged to disclose the information.
This is frankly unbelievable and highlights the contempt with which this government treats the ACT public. But we’re so accustomed to it, few batted an eyelid. (Like HL Mencken observed, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard” – which we are.)
But it’s not the only mismanagement uncovered this year.
We have the Budget itself.
Remember Mr Fiscally Responsible?
His first Budget in June this year was record-breaking for all the wrong reasons.
For the first – and certainly not the last time – the ACT budget deficit cracked nine figures. He announced a deficit of $1.1 billion in June.
Of course, there are rosy forecasts for the coming years, but the early signs aren’t good, and if past performance is an indicator of future returns, buckle up, boys and girls, the “$250 health levy” isn’t the only hypothecated slug this government will whack on you for their directorate-specific screw-ups.
In late July, just one month after the Budget, we learned that 77 of the ACT’s 92 public schools were already over budget or were expected to overspend this year.
The Australian Education Union’s ACT branch said $43 million will have to be saved.
They also called for Education Minister Yvette Berry to conduct an independent review into school funding before the next school year to assess how much money schools receive, what they are expected to achieve with it, and whether that money is sufficient to achieve what is expected.
Ms Berry rejected an independent review, saying it would “cost thousands”. (Interesting when you see a government suddenly get concerned about pennies when they pee away pounds.)
For the record, less than a week later, she did indeed announce an independent review.
That review is more urgent than ever as it seems the crisis is escalating.
On 3 September, Berry was compelled to guarantee that there will be no cuts to teachers, support staff, or programs in any public school (including casual and temporary staff) for the remainder of this year and next year.
Beyond that, well, it’s anybody’s guess.
Canberra Liberals Education spokesfolk Jeremy Hanson questioned how the budget had been handled, given that such a review was now required.
“For the minister to claim she needs to have an independent review within a month of the budget being handed down is a cause for deep concern,” he said.
He’s not wrong.
But it gets worse, because it seems the government can’t even handle libraries.
In the same week as the education fiasco, it was reported that a review of Libraries ACT has found an underfunded, understaffed and dysfunctional organisation that cannot meet its operating hours and has two branches that are underused and could be relocated.
It seems the government did its darndest to hide the scathing analysis.
The Independent Working Groups report was handed unannounced to City and Government Services Minister Tara Cheyne on 22 July and posted on the Libraries ACT website under Policies. Maybe if City Services went to libraries more often, they’d have a better concept of filing. Just a thought …
And then we have Calvary Hospital.
On 2 September, the same day the libraries problem was reported, we were finally given a figure for the compensation to Calvary for nicking their hospital: $88.2 million.
But one day later, it emerged that that wasn’t the bill. Not even close.
The total cost so far to the ACT of the takeover of Calvary Public Hospital is $150.6 million.
Maybe.
As Ian Bushnell wrote in Region, there were administrative and legal costs still to be calculated, as well as the possibility of a compensation claim not covered by the Deed of Release.
Maybe some boffin at Treasury or Health knows the final figure, but it seems they aren’t telling the minister. She doesn’t know. Or doesn’t want to know.
Remember, the budget was handed down less than three months ago and already it has holes big enough to drive the tram through … the cost of which we still don’t know. But it’s a good bet the government doesn’t know either. Or want to know. And they certainly don’t want you to know.
What does this mean for the ACT?
Well, the budget’s stuffed, debt is going through the roof, and the supposedly most able in the government – Mr Barr, Mr Steel, Ms Stephen-Smith and Ms Berry – have zero clue what the hell is going on in their bread-and-butter portfolios.
Every one of Barr’s likely replacements has an albatross around their necks. And that’s not even going into the fiasco of Steel’s botched and abandoned universal payroll and human resources system for the ACT Public Service that cost taxpayers more than $77 million.
On that occasion, Chris Steel vowed to do better.
He hasn’t. But he has company.
He might still be Barr’s replacement should that day ever come, but the way things are going, Labor would do well to run lame and let the Canberra Liberals deal with the mess in 2028.
Oh, God. The Canberra Liberals …
