Page 1088 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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I put to the Chief Minister that she not allow her Treasury officials to hand over that component of those funds equivalent to the trust moneys which have been denied to us, despite the promise of the Federal Government to keep us in comparative funding for three years. So the breach of that agreement can be matched because, as anyone in business knows - and my colleague Mr Humphries well understands - if you are still holding the vendor's funds and you have a problem with the purchase, you still have a grip on him.
We still have a grip on the Federal Government because we still have $68m, on the calculations available to us from this budget paper, that we owe the Federal Government. So it is not to get its $68m until it gives us our $20m. Pressure could have been put in this budget statement on the Federal Treasurer to let him know that we will do some tit for tat on that.
Similarly, Mr Speaker, there is the asbestos liability for 1989-90 of $12m. There are many arguments about whether we should bear any of that liability. I will not go on with that now, but in the preamble to the budget those two big sums are mentioned - $68m and $12m - neither of them with qualification or an expression of intent.
I think there would not be any secret about the things I say. The Federal Treasurer and the Finance Minister are well aware, I bet, that we have a grip on them over that $68m, and similarly for the asbestos liability. I suggest to the Chief Minister that she simply subtract $12m from what we owe the Federal Treasury. Why should we pay any of that asbestos liability? Why go to court against the Commonwealth? Why argue any further? The Chief Minister should simply announce that she is taking out $12m now and the same amount every year if it is needed to pay for Commonwealth neglect.
Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister had indicators before her that suggested she could have gone ahead in her budget with some of the expressions and advice given to her by Michael Salvaris, for example, the Government consultant on social justice programs. Mr Salvaris gave us a learned report. In one sense he emphasised something above all, which was the extent to which ACT revenue can be derived from rates on the many Commonwealth properties in Canberra.
There is no statement, no challenge, issued in relation to the funds that should be coming into the recurrent budget from Commonwealth occupancy of territorial land, and I am not speaking of Triangle land or national sites. Again, Mr Speaker, some of us were present at a seminar on 1 March 1988 when Dr Terry Dwyer from the Economic Planning Advisory Council indicated to us that, among other things, a major theme of self-government, and for its Treasurer, would be to tap the Commonwealth liability on lands and other aspects of their use of this Territory.
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