Page 3911 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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Mr Cornwell: Why?
MR CONNOLLY: "Off budget" means not using Consolidated Revenue. The source of these funds is off budget, but they will appear in the trust funds which are published in the budget papers. The Act requires us to do this - - -
Mr Cornwell: Before or after?
MR CONNOLLY: We have announced this year our proposals. In this year's budget papers you have correctly identified the proposed figure for the forthcoming budget year of some $19m. That is the figure we are talking about for this year, assuming that we get this through. We announced in the budget what our proposal would be for off-budget borrowings for this year, and we would continue the practice of announcing in the budget context what our borrowing proposals are. This is central to the Government's economic strategy in that what these funds are for, members, and Liberal members in particular, should remember, is to provide home buyer assistance to lower income earners, to assist them into the private home ownership sector.
Mr Cornwell: You heard what I said.
MR CONNOLLY: Yes, I did, and the answer, Mr Cornwell, is that you correctly picked that the figure in the budget does refer to this. So, the answer to your suggestion that this could all be done on the quiet is that it is not correct. We will publish each year in our budget papers our projections for borrowings for the future year. What we are doing will be flagged in advance. The funds are required to be held in trust accounts that are established by virtue of this Act as trust accounts under section 85 of the Audit Act. You have the various accountability mechanisms that can come through there, we have the Estimates Committee, we have questions, and we have the Public Accounts Committee, should that committee wish to go down that track.
So, there is publication in advance of what we are doing. We will always do that. This will be another mechanism the Government has to look at - intervening in the market to provide additional funds. At the end of the day, Liberal Party members, this is money which has been borrowed to go out into the private sector, which you say you so strongly support, to buy houses to create employment for Canberra's young people in particular. This is a measure that relates very directly to the level of activity in our home building sector, and any suggestion that it would be opposed would have serious implications for the level of activity in that sector.
As I said at the outset, most States have gone down this path. We have differed from New South Wales in that we are running it as a government program as opposed to a private sector program. That is something that one might have thought a few weeks ago the Liberal Party would criticise; but the report recently published in the New South Wales Parliament on the Housing Department's involvement in private sector funding, which raised enormous queries and problems, would be a good reason why the Liberal Party has not raised that issue of principle tonight. They seem to be happy with the concept that if we - - -
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