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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1811 ..

MR SPEAKER: You are answering the question as you see fit, Chief Minister.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I was actually addressing the $14.2m that Ms Follett, by her very words, has suggested was straight mismanagement. I fully agree that having a health budget that blows out by that much is not acceptable, but I do not agree at all that seeing more patients and reducing waiting lists is mismanagement. That is directly what caused at least a percentage of that overrun.

Ms Follett mentions the industrial dispute as supposed mismanagement. What we have managed to do now is reach agreement with all but one of the unions, and reach agreement within our budget parameters - unlike those opposite, who reached agreement with at least two obvious unions outside their budget and without any capacity to pay for the increases; without the increases factored into their forward estimates and with, seriously, no capacity at all to pay. I think a situation where we now have enterprise bargains with all but one union, that we can afford to pay inside our budget parameters, is actually a good step and is actually a bit of a win for the people of Canberra. It means that they will not have to pay significantly higher taxes to pay for wage increases that we simply could not have afforded. What we have managed to do is come up with wage increases that are fair but that are affordable. I do not think that is mismanagement. I think that is a good outcome for everybody.

Ms Follett mentions, as her third issue, the CRA issue. That was debated at length in this place, and I think we showed quite categorically that, if we had not allowed CRA to go down the path that they did, they simply would not have done anything. In fact, in no other State have CRA paid stamp duty on transactions that were involved in changes in company structure. In other words, the actual shares were not transferred from one company to another. It was all to do with a merger. The only States in which CRA has actually gone down that path are the ones in which CRA was given an exemption. It shows categorically that we could never have got the money - end of deal.

Mr Berry: You gave the money away.

MRS CARNELL: The money never existed.

Members interjected.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The Chief Minister has the floor.

MRS CARNELL: In fact, it was categorically shown because it is true that Ms Follett did not back the deal when CRA put it to her. What did they do? Nothing.

MS FOLLETT: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I have heard Mrs Carnell on the media indicating that she is going to have to be looking at cutting services as a result of the Premiers Conference outcome.

MR SPEAKER: Ask your supplementary question without a preamble.

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