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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1837 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

they are not going to happen. Mr Speaker, how much confidence can the community place in Mrs Carnell on this matter? It is quite clear that this is just another diversion to take the minds of the community off the real problem, which is Mrs Carnell's mismanagement of her budget over the last 12 months, which will put her in a difficult position in the coming 12 months.

Mrs Carnell also waxed eloquent about how she was going to make New South Wales pay, about how she was going to tear up the Medicare agreement and charge Bob Carr lots of extra money for treating New South Wales patients in our health system. She was going to charge Mr Carr for teaching New South Wales kids in our schools. Once again, this is no more than political puff from Mrs Carnell. She knows that there is a Medicare agreement that provides for specified payments.

Mrs Carnell: We do not have specified payments between the States. They are negotiated between the States.

MR WHITECROSS: Determined by the Commonwealth. She knows that the Grants Commission already takes account of the fact that New South Wales residents use services in the ACT and that any attempt to directly charge New South Wales will only lead to adjustments by the Grants Commission. She knows that New South Wales are likely to say, "If you have a problem, go to the Grants Commission", and are unlikely to enter into a deal which has them paying for Mrs Carnell's budget problems.

Mrs Carnell enters into perilous waters when she tries to argue that New South Wales should be paying lots of additional costs, without contemplating the range of costs that Mr Carr might ask her to pay in relation to services New South Wales provides, not least of which is Mr Humphries's beloved helicopter. The ACT is contributing $100,000 to that and the New South Wales Government is contributing $1.1m.

Mrs Carnell: That is right - because it is a service for the whole region.

MR WHITECROSS: That is right; it is a service to the whole region. Nearly 50 per cent of the people in the region actually live in the ACT. Mrs Carnell needs to be careful. I am sure she knows that she is not going to get very far with this and I am sure she knows that it is going to resolve itself into a stalemate; but in the meantime she creates the impression, the illusion, in the community that she has a solution to this problem when she has not. The problem is Mrs Carnell's budget mismanagement. The problem is that Mrs Carnell enters the new financial year with a range of problems of her own making - deferred expenditure which she will have to pay for next year, budget blow-outs in health which she has to somehow claw back, the sale of assets which she will not be able to sell again but which she was budgeting to sell in future years, and declines in revenue which will undermine her budget position and which her officials so far have no explanation for.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

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