Page 4605 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 15 December 1993
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We can take it a step further. The Auditor-General's report No. 6 of 1992 says the same thing: "Having regard to the two actuarial reports, having regard to the Board's own recommendation, we agree that you are overfunded. Please reduce the levy from 2.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent". Once again, there were some amendments to the legislation in this house. The Minister said, "Advice given to me tells me that everything is going to be fixed by the end of 1993". Based on that recommendation, the Independents in this place said, "We are prepared to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt. He has given an assurance that his advice says that things will be settled by 1993".
Mr Berry: On what date was it that I said that?
MR DE DOMENICO: Do you want me to quote what you said?
Mr Berry: Yes. What was the date?
MR DE DOMENICO: I am not sure of the date, Mr Minister, but it was when you introduced certain amendments to your own Bill. Mr Moore, Ms Szuty, Mr Stevenson and everybody else will verify that the indication you gave, loud and clear, was that you would fix it by the end of this year. That was the assurance you gave this Assembly.
Mr Berry: Don't reknit the web, Tony.
MR DE DOMENICO: We are not reknitting the web. That is the assurance you have given this Assembly. Minister, what the Liberal Party is saying to you right now is that you have disregarded advice given to you by actuaries; you have disregarded advice given to you by the Auditor-General; you have disregarded advice given to you by your own board. Why? Because of a promise you made to a particular union, or perhaps to a particular individual within the union.
Interestingly, in January 1991 private actuaries reviewed the finances of the board covering the three years to 30 June 1990 and recommended that the board should reduce the levy from 2.5 per cent to 1.25 per cent. In April 1991 the board wrote to the Government and recommended that, effective July 1991, the levy be reduced to 1.25 per cent, plus 0.25 per cent, the latter percentage being utilised as a contribution to training in the building industry. Under questioning from the Estimates Committee, Mr Bob Yeomans, the chairman of the board, when asked, "Is it not true that the money allocated solely for the purposes of training is set aside in a separate fund and not utilised for anything else but training?", quite correctly responded, "Yes". In other words, any argument that anybody might bring up, trying to link training with the 2.5 per cent, will not wash, on the admission of the chairman of the board under questioning from the Estimates Committee.
Quoting again from the briefing notes:
Although the Board has no formal obligations to the Building Industry Training Council it has been putting aside funds for training use and has advanced them to the ACT Building Industry Training Council for special training projects. The Board advanced approximately $700,000 for industry training and presently holds around $400,000 of these existing training funds which have not been utilised.
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