Page 2176 - Week 08 - Thursday, 10 September 1992
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To get back to the issue at hand, Mr Kaine was quoting not Mr Berry's figures, not Mr Kaine's figures, and luckily not Mr Lamont's figures. It is a fact that external forces did play a great hand in the so-called $6.7m surplus. For Mr Berry's edification, quoting the Treasurer's own figures, there were increased taxes of $17.2m. Property valuations had a lot to do with that. There was an increase in the petrol tax, Mr Berry. Mr Connolly is putting in Bills saying, "We are going to control petrol prices; petrol prices are too high in the ACT" - and you made $2.4m more than you were supposed to on petrol! If you want petrol to come down, Mr Berry, take off the $2.4m, plus the other 3c a litre you promised you would take off and then changed your mind on. You cannot have it both ways. You have more moves than Boris Spassky, Mr Berry.
As I said before, Madam Speaker, the best way to make a big business into a small business is to put it into the hands of Mr Berry. He will do it for you every time. To pull him out of the mire, they will give him the business rules and they will give him some more money out of the business rules. I am suggesting that Mr Berry has not long to go before he will not be able to control health. They will be shifting him out to urban services or into the back boondocks somewhere and he will not be able to do it again.
Mr Kaine also said that there was $5.4m and $2.1m in extra payments from the Commonwealth. There was a $2.25m dividend from Totalcare. That is also interesting. Madam Speaker, you will realise that, once Totalcare was corporatised, the backroom committee said: "No more corporatisation or privatisation". As long as you, Mr Berry, are in the Labor Government, there will be no more corporatisation, although the board would be delighted to have ACTEW corporatised. Madam Speaker, I will bet that there will be moves to change the chairmanship of that board, or there will be discussions about changing the chairman of that board, because he happens to agree that ACTEW ought to be corporatised. That dividend provided an extra $2.25m. In the words of the paper, "Expenditure was greater than the budget provision". They are not Mr Kaine's words; they are the words that were provided to us by the Chief Minister: "Expenditure was greater than the budget provision". If anyone can tell me how that means that we are doing a good job I would like to know, because obviously he can also reinvent the wheel.
A lot has been said by Mr Berry about the business rules. Call it business rules, call it excess funds, call it whatever you want; but it was $7.7m down the gurgler, under you, the Health Minister. Then they gave you this other little fund and said, "Listen, in case you do not do a good job, Wayne, here is some more money you can use. We will make you look good because you can say, 'I have this wonderful surplus under the business rules' ". No-one else understands the business rules. The way the Health Minister describes them, no-one can understand the business rules; but luckily he can and we can convert a $7.7m deficit into a healthy surplus. So much for handling the funds of the ACT. For all of those reasons, Madam Speaker, I am happy to endorse the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (11.47), in reply: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank members for their comments on these documents that have been presented to the Assembly. As Mr Kaine started out to say, the documents are pretty straightforward matters. They are records of measures taken by the Executive in accordance with the Audit Act and, as Mr Kaine said, they are pretty standard mechanisms. The measures allow the Executive a degree of flexibility to enable appropriations to be varied during the year.
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