Page 2170 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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Mr Lamont: Are you going to go for your full time?
MR KAINE: I may even seek an extension of time, since I am making three speeches in one.
Madam Speaker, the financial statements tabled in the August sittings by the Treasurer refer essentially to mechanical requirements under the Audit Act 1989 with which in principle the Opposition has no dispute. However, when the Treasurer associates them with claims by her of a $6.7m surplus last year, it does raise some questions that should be brought to public attention. The Treasurer announced the $6.7m as a financial triumph. That was supposed to be a surplus. Such a surplus might have been a triumph in the context of the financial tragedies in Victoria and South Australia; but in my view it is not good enough in the context of ACT financial management. The Territory has not suffered a dramatic collapse of its major State financial enterprises in the depth of the worst depression since the 1930s, such as has happened in Victoria and South Australia. So you would expect our performance to be better.
I would have admired the Treasurer's financial management skills had the sense of triumph been real rather than merely a sigh of relief on her part. In fact, it was little more than that. The credit for the surplus does not lie with the Treasurer; it lies largely with external forces over which the Treasurer has no control whatsoever. The surplus does not arise from those elements of recurrent funding over which the Government exerts control. For example, it is not in salaries or that part of the running costs subject to alteration by government decision. From her own statement, it is clear that the surplus had nothing to do with the exercise of financial management skills by the Treasurer.
It is obvious to everyone that the surplus was the result of serendipitous increased tax receipts to the extent of $17.2m, due in part to increases in property valuations yielding $2.1m from rate increases and higher than anticipated petrol tax receipts of $2.4m. In major part, the increased receipts were also a result of the provision by the Commonwealth of additional funds for specific purpose payments - that is $5.4m recurrent and $2.1m capital - and for agency services that the ACT Government performs on behalf of the Commonwealth. A significant contribution was made by a $2.25m dividend payment from Totalcare Industries, a government business enterprise established by the Alliance Government. I am sure that, if this Government had had any control over it, it would have retained it in its old, inefficient and unproductive form.
The Treasurer's media statement indicated that government expenditures were greater than the budget provision, and that is the point on which attention ought to be focused - not these unplanned windfall increases in revenue and money coming from the Commonwealth. How did the Government perform in controlling its expenditures? By her own admission, they were considerably greater than the budget provision at the beginning of the year. In fact, the financial outcome for the Consolidated Fund was rescued from the jaws of a major deficit by unexpected recurrent and capital receipts. You might call it a Treasurer's equivalent of a lottery win. That good fortune does not, or should not, be allowed to obscure the Government's excess expenditure, management of which is within the power of the Treasurer. Indeed, it is a responsibility of the Treasurer to keep control over all expenditures. There was excess recurrent expenditure in the health program to the tune of $7.7m. Mr Berry talks about budgetary control. He does not have any control over it at all.
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