Mr Speaker and hon members, we remain aware that budgeting, and the overall fiscal framework that drives it, is a balancing act. Competing, sometimes even contradictory policy and institutional demands must be met within the constraints of a finite budget. These constraints weigh even heavier upon the process when the economy is in recession and revenue is in decline.
Thus, now - more than ever before - we need to be very clear about our priorities. At this moment, various communities throughout the country are in turmoil due to the service delivery protests. The burning tyres and rubber bullets provide a stark reminder that the fiscal framework and everything that the government does should reflect the needs of the people, otherwise we will be heading for a violent crisis of legitimacy for this government.
The UDM welcomes the acknowledgement by the hon Minister of Finance that we require a national, long-term consensus on the economy. This is the reason that the UDM has been calling for a national indaba on the economy. It is regrettable that the Minister, in his delivery of the national budget, talked about "starting today" on job creation. The ANC government should have started on job creation 15 years ago.
We are concerned about the projected public debt rising to 40% of the gross domestic product, GDP, by the year 2013, especially since lower-than- expected revenues might become a trend. We broadly agree with the priorities of education, health, crime fighting, rural development, job creation, and municipal and housing investment.
We believe that it is necessary to heed the concerns raised by the Financial and Fiscal Commission regarding the apparent lack of intergovernmental structures for the co-ordination of the priority areas of employment creation and rural development. The continued pursuit of the national health insurance is troubling since current independent calculations indicate that it would be vastly unaffordable. Where will our economy source additional hundreds of billions?
We believe that the government should not claim victory on projected large infrastructure spending when much of it will not be funded through the budget but by the public through tariffs, such as electricity tariffs. Tariffs constitute a secondary tax that increases the burden on household budgets, escalates inflation and is poured into parastatals, such as Eskom, with poor track records and severe leadership vacuums. I thank you.