Page 1565 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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INDEPENDENT AUDIT TO DETERMINE ASSETS TRANSFER
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.48): Mr Deputy Speaker, I was going to begin by thanking the Government for graciously allowing this debate to take place but, in view of what has happened over the last four hours in this Assembly, even if I said it with tongue in cheek I could not possibly have meant it, so I will get straight on with the debate. I move:
That -
(1) this Assembly requires the Government to commission an independent audit to determine the assets transferred to the Territory on self-government and the public debt associated with those assets;
(2) the report be provided to the Assembly no later than 30 November 1989; and
(3) the report be referred to the Public Accounts Committee for consideration.
The motion before us has to do with the commissioning of an independent audit to determine the assets transferred to the Territory on self-government and the public debt associated with those assets. I seek leave of the Assembly to remove the reporting date in paragraph (2) since it would now be impossible to achieve that reporting date and to substitute for the date "30 November 1989" the words "the first sitting day of 1990".
Mr Deputy Speaker, this is not a new issue. It is an important issue and it is one that requires early resolution, but it is not a new issue. It is an issue that has been on the Liberal Party agenda since the beginning of our election campaign and it is one that I have alluded to on many occasions and particularly during the period since 11 May 1989 in this house.
It is interesting that Government members have not taken up this particular Liberal Party policy. They have picked up a few others. They have responded to the criticism that we have directed to them on many matters. They very quickly produced a discussion paper on planning when we criticised their lack of action on that. They injected a first home buyers stamp duty plan and a fidelity trust fund into their budget - a direct steal out of Liberal Party policy and one that nowhere received any attention in their own policies nor in the initial budget statement, but they were quick to pick it up and insert it in their budget. However, they have not picked up the question of identifying what our assets and our public debt amount to. The reason for that, I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, is pretty obvious.
It is important and imperative that we know all the details of the assets we have inherited and their condition. I notice that the Chief Minister did allude to that latter problem - the condition of assets - in her budget speech yesterday when she claimed that the Commonwealth was partly
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