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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3280 ..

Mrs Carnell: Through the tripartite board that manages the money.

Mr Berry: No. She said that there was no contract. There is a contract with the MBA.

Mrs Carnell: I did not say that there was no contract. I said that the money would not go to the MBA, and it will not.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, you can see the contention that has been raised by just raising the issue. There are questions about why we would consider legislation that will act retrospectively. This Assembly is always particularly reluctant to deal with retrospectivity. The Minister, in introducing the Bill, identified the retrospective nature of the legislation. I have just had a quick scan through his speech and, as I recall, he said something to the effect that the legislation would allow the money to be quickly used to create jobs.

That leads us to the question of whether jobs will be created by this piece of legislation or not. My contention is that no jobs will be created. Training money is to be provided and apprentices will be trained. Nobody is going to sneeze at that - it is an important issue - but will this legislation create jobs or just train people to fill jobs? I think that the latter is true. We are talking about money that trains people to fill jobs. The Chief Minister, a short while ago, said that the construction industry is very flat at the moment. Are we training people for jobs that simply do not exist? That is a very important point for us to take into account.

I am told that there will be an actuarial report on this fund in the next little while so that we will have a very clear idea of what the fund is. The Minister has told us that the board's balance sheet shows that the board had assets and total equity to the value of $18.6m at 30 June 1995. That figure was derived by subtracting total liabilities of $14.59m from the total assets of $33.45m. That is how we get that figure of $18m to $19m that people are talking about as being available. That was over a year ago. Apparently, an actuarial report will be coming down in the next month or so, certainly before the end of the year. We have not seen a report yet, so we do not know the amount of money involved. I presume that the report will show more money, not less, because the Long Service Leave Board has been in existence longer and funds are still being put in.

Mr Berry argues strongly from the basis that he has tabled before this Assembly another piece of legislation which calls on this money. His legislation provides for an improvement in service conditions for people in the construction industry. That also has to be taken into account when we make a decision. It is a complicated set of issues, and I have been lobbied heavily by people on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, we have the Government saying that they are going to create 50 to 150 jobs, depending on who is speaking and at what time. On the other hand, we have the Opposition saying that $300,000 is going to go directly into plugging a hole in a training scheme of the Master Builders Association.

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