Page 2171 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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Mr Berry: A surplus.
MR KAINE: Let me repeat: There was excess recurrent expenditure in the health program to the tune of $7.7m. How you can convert that into a surplus is beyond my thinking, but with Mr Berry's creative accounting he might be able to do it. We do not know how much of that additional expenditure was neatly agreed to in advance through the operation of these mysterious business rules. The Government has never explained why this free availability of funds for Mr Berry should be granted while other managers elsewhere in the Public Service are still required to live within their budget allocations. It is a very curious arrangement where Mr Berry is the only Minister who has this free access to money. All he has to do is ask for more money and it mysteriously appears.
Mr De Domenico: That is only whilst he is Health Minister. When he changes over he will not have it.
MR KAINE: That may be so. It serves to give the Health Minister a smokescreen that he can hide behind, but it is hardly justification for deliberately setting aside good management practice. He would do better to focus on management practice and stop trying to obscure the whole issue.
Current and historic overexpenditures on health and education - $3.2m over budget in the government schools program in 1991-92 in particular - have contributed significantly through the processes of the Grants Commission to a $7.1m reduction in the level of the general revenue grant from the Commonwealth. We have poor management resulting in our being brought to account by the Grants Commission. Members should further note that, of the so-called $6.7m surplus, $5.4m was by way of extra recurrent specific purpose payments from the Commonwealth. In other words, the Commonwealth gave us a bit more money and because of that we ended up with a surplus. The Chief Minister is claiming credit for this.
Of that $5.4m, $3.7m was received after 5 June, according to the financial statements recently tabled in the house. Not only was the surplus a lucky lottery result; financial salvation arrived at the front door just before the creditors and repossession agents. The Chief Minister, again, was very fortunate. It may be seen by some, though they would not be reasonable people, as churlish to criticise a Treasurer who scraped into surplus with a last minute pools result. Regrettably, the Treasurer pretends to financial competence when the reality is far removed from that.
The Treasurer's lack of acumen in these matters is reflected in her presentation of the statement on additional appropriations in terms of specific purpose payments. She surely must know that payments for services provided to the Commonwealth are not specific purpose payments; they are cost recovery payments made under arrangements with the Commonwealth for the provision of municipal services in the ACT and Jervis Bay. The difference may have been only a clerical error; but, when the lower case letters in the Audit Act give a significantly different meaning to the words, I would have expected the Treasurer and the Treasury to come up with a more correct and more precise statement.
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