Page 2274 - Week 08 - Friday, 21 June 1991
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Commonwealth Funding
MR KAINE: I would like to direct a question to the Chief Minister and Treasurer. Mr Speaker, on the front page of the Canberra Times I saw a nice photograph of the Chief Minister and Treasurer sitting in the corridor outside Mr Kerin's office. Is that indicative of the response that you got from Mr Kerin? If not, can you tell us what specific commitment, if any, Mr Kerin gave to increasing the revenue to the Territory from the Commonwealth in the coming fiscal year?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mr Kaine for the question. Mr Speaker, I will be asking leave to make a statement on this matter later on this afternoon; but, perhaps, so that Mr Kaine does not go entirely without an answer, I can say that I did, indeed, see Mr Kerin yesterday afternoon, and I had a number of purposes in doing that. The first was really to lodge a protest at the outcome of the Premiers Conference for the ACT. It was an historic outcome in terms of Premiers Conferences as it saw the ACT's money cut, and that was the first time that any small State or Territory had, in fact, suffered a cut in its money. I believe that that requires an adjustment in the ACT's budget that is quite unfair; that is much more brutal an adjustment than I thought would be fair at this stage of our transition to self-government.
I also raised with Mr Kerin a number of other issues to do with the financial arrangements between the ACT and the Commonwealth. Just briefly, those matters related to the ACT forests - I am sure that Mr Kaine knows that the Commonwealth has put in, in my view, a quite unwarranted bid for the ACT to pay for the transfer of those forests - and also to some land that the Commonwealth is asking the ACT to pay for, land which, in fact, was handed over before self-government. I also addressed the general question of the ACT's use of its major asset, namely, its land, and some of the restrictions upon our freedom to deal with that land that are imposed by the National Capital Planning Authority.
It would be quite wrong of me, I think, to say to members that there is any scope for optimism in Mr Kerin's response. The faces may change; the answers from Federal Treasurers tend to remain pretty much the same. Nevertheless, Mr Kerin did agree that there could be some further negotiation on the transitional arrangements. He did give me a very good hearing, which I was pleased to see, and, to put it bluntly, he has not heard the last of me. I will be pursuing those matters.
MR KAINE: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. That was a long and comprehensive answer, but you did not answer the question. Can I safely assume that, unlike Mr Field who was very successful when he went to the Commonwealth Treasurer, in fact, you have had no commitment of any kind from Mr Kerin to supplement our financing at this stage?
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