Page 1360 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 10 May 1994

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

That is fairly straightforward, but then it says:

which are not to operate as they would have operated had clause 3(15) of the original Agreement not been rescinded ...

I do not know what that means, and the Chief Minister did not explain it. Then it goes on:

in relation to -

(a) borrowings;

(b) raisings; and

by the Commonwealth, a State, a local governing body or any entity owned or controlled wholly or as to a major part by any of them -

then there is this other qualification -

save for any of the foregoing exempted from time to time by the Loan Council.

When you read that, you have to ask the question - and I would have thought the Chief Minister, in tabling the Bill, would have amplified it: What does it mean? What, in fact, are the powers of this reconstituted Loan Council, except to make resolutions with certain qualifications in certain fields? What the Bill does not explain is the force of these resolutions. In what way, if at all, are they binding, for example, on the Australian Capital Territory if the Loan Council choose to make a resolution, say, about our borrowing, which according to this they can do? Will they continue, for example, to make resolutions about global borrowing limits that confine and constrain the ACT in what it can borrow? Is that the intention? If not, in what way has it changed?

The Opposition agrees with the continuation of the Loan Council. We believe that it has a legitimate role to play. Indeed, it is established under the Constitution anyway, so presumably you would have to change the Constitution to abolish it. We certainly agree with the notion that, if the Loan Council is to be a functioning body, the ACT ought properly to be a member of it, as ought the Northern Territory. But I would ask the Chief Minister whether in her concluding remarks she could explain exactly what the role and functions of the Loan Council now are and - the second part of the question - in what way they are binding or not binding on the Australian Capital Territory as one of its constituent members.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .