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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3473 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

its bills for education, for health, for fixing up roads, for fixing up footpaths. Instead of going to the bank to get their mortgage, they go to the private sector and make an arrangement whereby money is provided up front and then rent is paid year after year, with, of course, a great deal of interest.

The Government calls this a lease-back arrangement. To the rest of us, Mr Speaker, the arrangement looks exactly the same as for the family who borrowed against their capital, against their house, in order to pay their recurrent bills. The reality is that this lease-back system that we see is exactly what Mrs Carnell claims horrifies her. It is just borrowing in another name. Like all of this budget, what is going on is dressed up in another guise. As people look at this budget with more and more care over the next few weeks prior to this Appropriation Bill coming back before this Assembly, they will realise, again and again, that what we have been presented with and what we are told is very different from what is actually there. That, I think, is going to be the real issue about this budget.

Mrs Carnell claims that there is a surplus and that that surplus will build to about $113m by the year 2000. I draw your attention, Mr Speaker, to the fact that the Chief Minister, who one would think would defend her budget, does not even do us the courtesy of remaining here in the chamber while I am responding to her budget. That, I must say, I find appalling. Mr Speaker, there is this ideologically driven need to have a surplus, if in fact one even exists. She is claiming that one exists, and we know that there is a difference of view from David Chessell on that. If one exists and if a cash surplus of $113m is going to be built by the year 2000 as she claims, one would have to ask: Why is it that in very difficult economic times we would want to have surplus cash on hand, when there are many issues to be dealt with? Mr Speaker, these are simply ideological issues that she has not explained and not attempted to wrestle with.

In cash terms it is a surplus, but in reality it is a greatly increased deficit of $98m. This issue was raised by my Independent colleague Mr Osborne in a very sensible question in the Assembly yesterday, and it was followed up by David Chessell in the Canberra Times this morning. I wonder, Mr Osborne, whether he heard on the grapevine of your question and asked you for some advice, or whether the obvious had occurred to both you and Dr Chessell at the same time. So, after taking away the Government's planned $100m worth of asset sales, total spending is up by 5.8 per cent, and revenue is up by only 3.2 per cent. It blows the underlying deficit out by $35m, to $98m, exactly the same figure that Mr Osborne gave in this house yesterday.

Mr Speaker, there are a series of other issues about this lease-back arrangement, this form of borrowing that this Government has decided on. One of the things that concern me greatly, and I have discussed this with Mr Humphries, whose area of responsibility it is, is the selling off of the magistrates courthouse or, more to the point, effectively taking out a mortgage on the courthouse. Is that what a lease-back arrangement is? It is just another name for taking out a mortgage, not with a bank but with somebody in private enterprise. Of course, it may well be with a bank. One has to wonder why it is that a bank can make a profit out of that system but we can do much better without it. There are real questions about that.

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