Dom Perrottet: Booming economy keeps the state buzzing
IT’S boom time in NSW. Six months after delivering a June Budget with strong surpluses, record funding for new hospitals and schools, $1.6 billion in tax cuts and a massive infrastructure pipeline, I am pleased to report our state’s finances are now even stronger, propelling the state to greater heights.
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IT’S boom time in NSW. Six months after delivering a June Budget with strong surpluses, record funding for new hospitals and schools, $1.6 billion in tax cuts and a massive infrastructure pipeline, I am pleased to report our state’s finances are now even stronger, propelling the state to greater heights.
As today’s half-yearly NSW Budget update shows, the forecast 2017-18 surplus is up from $2.7 billion to $3.3 billion, with average surpluses of $2.1 billion forecast over four years that we will need to help deliver our record infrastructure pipeline.
Meanwhile, our NSW economy accounted for almost half the nation’s economic growth in 2016-17, with strong growth forecast to continue.
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Most importantly, the flurry of activity is flowing through to the people who live and work here in the form of a massive jobs boom.
Whether it’s major infrastructure, new schools and hospitals, or record housing completions, the whole state is pitching in to build the NSW of the future, and that means jobs, jobs, jobs.
Unemployment in NSW is just 4.6 per cent, the lowest of any state. Almost 220,000 jobs have been added since the 2015 election — 70,000 more than the Government committed. And more than 80 per cent of those new jobs are full-time, almost double the rate of the rest of Australia.
In just the past year, the number of jobs in construction alone has grown by almost 9 per cent.
This jobs boom, underpinned by our record infrastructure pipeline, means more opportunity and greater prosperity for NSW families.
Our financial strength also means we can help ease the squeeze, with our First Home Buyers Assistance scheme. This is already saving thousands of first home buyers up to $34,000 in stamp duty and grants.
Our new toll relief package completely eliminates annual car registration fees for regular toll road users, saving families up to $715 a year per vehicle and adding to average savings of $120 per year already available to motorists through our cuts to Green Slip costs.
We’re doing all this while investing record funding for hospitals, schools and major infrastructure, cutting taxes for small business, and supporting the myriad new programs and ongoing services announced in the June Budget. And we’re still recording healthy surpluses.
That’s what you get from a Liberal-National NSW Government: real vision, real action, and the financial management to back it up.
The coming years will present some big financial challenges. Our GST share is dropping, as NSW is penalised for its success. We are fighting hard to change that.
We also need to unleash a new productivity boom in NSW to help stimulate wage growth and keep our economy surging ahead. That will take some tough reform which I look forward to tackling in the new year.
As I said at the Budget, we’re not there yet. NSW is littered with construction sites. That’s not always easy for our communities, and we can’t just press fast forward and skip to the end.
But we are building this state together, and it’s all hands on deck. And when we’re done, NSW will shine like never before.
Dominic Perrottet is NSW Treasurer.