Page 489 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 1991
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The other points follow logically, requiring the Public Accounts Committee to assess how the surplus is currently spent and to make recommendations on how that surplus ought to be used. I believe that it is appropriate for the Public Accounts Committee to make broad recommendations as to whether or not the surplus should be used to ensure that our borrowings are reduced or that the capital works program generally be run in two stages - one stage being what we are hoping to spend in our budget and then, perhaps, a second stage where the surplus can be used for these other items.
There is a series of options there, but I think that in terms of public accountability and public confidence it is important that the Public Accounts Committee of this Assembly look at this issue and take it on as I have suggested.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (11.46): I must say that I was quite puzzled as to why Mr Moore put this motion on the notice paper. Having listened to him, I can conclude only that it was so that he could demonstrate his expertise as a maintenance engineer. Perhaps if we were to appoint him managing supervisor for the Aranda school it might solve the whole problem. The rest of the information he provided simply demonstrated that he does not seem to understand the way the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee work, and I will deal with those in a minute.
The basic premise Mr Moore seems to be working on is that somehow we have a practice of overestimating and creating a slush fund. That is patently absurd and, quite frankly, Mr Speaker, it is not true. So the whole premise of his motion is based on sand. Any treasurer and any government that deliberately set about overestimating to inflate its budget and then set about taxing people to produce money it did not need would be plain stupid. I do not think I am that and I do not think Mr Moore would assert that I am. We go through the taxation problem every year. Every time you raise a tax, even if you raise it by the consumer price index, you get a public outcry. I am not about to impose taxes that I do not need to impose, nor I suggest would Ms Follett if she became Treasurer again. So it is a patent absurdity to argue that.
The ACT Government goes about preparing its budgets in the same way as all other governments. The estimates are produced on the basis of current government policies. They take into account the best available information on economic and demographic factors that prevail at the time, and to assert that they deliberately inflate it is a nonsense. Mr Moore seems to be confusing budgeting with that low-level estimating that is done in works areas for specific works projects. I cannot speak for what they do at that level. They may attempt to pad their budget a little so that they do not get caught out with insufficient funds, but I think that if they do that and surplus money
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