Page 5828 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
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POSTPONEMENT OF ORDERS OF THE DAY
Motion (by Mr Berry) agreed to:
That orders of the day Nos 7 to 10, Executive business, be postponed until the next day of sitting.
FIRE BRIGADE (ADMINISTRATION)
(AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991
Debate resumed from 5 December 1991, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR STEFANIAK (8.50): This is a Bill that the Alliance Government sought to bring in. It has not changed from its original form in any substantive way. I note the amendment that Mr Connolly is to move, which takes into account a matter raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. That is also acceptable to us. The Bill covers some problems which have been in existence, certainly to my knowledge, for some time. I can recall them being brought to my attention as early as about April or May last year, Mr Speaker. This Bill merely picks up some anomalies. Accordingly, as it is in the terms of what the Alliance Government was going to do, which we accepted whilst in government, it has the support of the Liberal Party.
MR COLLAERY (8.51): I have a couple of questions for the Minister who introduced the Bill. One concerns arrangements made to bring the fire brigade into line in respect of the compulsory retirement at age 60 when members have contributed to a Commonwealth superannuation scheme based on retirement at age 65. I ask whether the potential cost of that to the ACT fiscus has been assessed in terms of the current age profile of Commonwealth superannuation contributors presently in the fire brigade. That is the first question.
The second question I am interested in is whether, in making this arrangement post self-government, the ACT Treasury applied the emerging cost calculation similarly to the manner in which we did when we took over policing. I believe that the ACT Treasury at that time reached an arrangement whereby our liability for superannuation in respect of other public servants post self-government was developed on that basis.
To put it in more simple language, I am interested to know whether we are taking on liabilities for superannuation lump sum payments in respect of service which antedates self-government - and clearly we are - and, if so, the extent to which the Commonwealth Government has contributed
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