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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 777 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I am very happy to respond to the point Mr Berry raised, even though he has now run off the floor of the chamber. Let me make this point: The fact is that governments often describe things or make predictions which do not come true. The Treasurer, for example, in presenting last year's budget, laid out a series of projections for revenue that the Territory expected to receive in the course of this financial year and expenditure it expected to incur. She made, in a sense, predictions about economic activity, Government performance and all sorts of things in the course of that budget. Very often, in fact almost invariably, those predictions are not met exactly. Often they are met approximately, which is a sign, perhaps, of sound budgeting and good management; but very rarely are they met exactly. Sometimes they are not met even approximately.

The question before us today is not whether Ministers in government have crystal balls and can predict what is going on. The question is whether they had information which should have told them that what they were doing or saying in public, particularly in this place to the members of this Assembly, was not likely to be accurate. That is the crux of this matter. The crux of the matter is not that what Mrs Carnell has projected has not come to pass, or probably will not come to pass. The question is whether or not she had a right to rely on the costing methods being used by her department in saying to the Assembly, "We expect to get savings of $2m".

Mr Speaker, if she was not entitled to rely on that costing, why did previous governments rely on the costing? Why does the party which attacks this Chief Minister and Minister for Health rely on the inaccuracy of this costing method now, when it was not prepared to do so just over 12 months ago when it was using it to project a saving of something like $4m to the budget from VMO contracts?

Mr Kaine: Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

MR HUMPHRIES: Hindsight, as Mr Kaine says, is a wonderful thing. The remarkable thing, Mr Speaker, is that, if the former Government had been re-elected and Mr Berry or Mr Connolly had been sitting on this side of the chamber as Minister for Health, they presumably would have to be defending a promise of a $4m saving on VMO contracts. You did promise $4m, Mr Berry.

Mr Berry: We would not lie. We would not swagger in here and lie about it.

MR HUMPHRIES: But you did. You projected - - -

Mr Berry: We would not say that it is in the bag.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

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