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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4058 ..

Mrs Carnell: I am sorry, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I understood that we were debating the Government response to the Estimates Committee report.

MR SPEAKER: Yes.

MR BERRY: The Government's attitude to the Estimates Committee report and the whole Estimates Committee process is under the microscope here. If the Government is stung by some of the truths of the matter, that is not my problem; it is theirs. The fact is that they were very tardy in answering questions and made it as difficult as they could for the Estimates Committee to get to the bottom of things.

If you have a look at the budget itself, it was a public relations exercise. It was full of deliberate inaccuracies to try to mislead the community. Take the 1996-97 ACT budget press release issued by Mrs Carnell. It said this:

Mrs Carnell said key elements of the budget included:

. a cash surplus of $10m;

... ... ...

Mrs Carnell: Yes. It is true.

MR BERRY: Well, you have to say to people, "We just sold $100m worth of your assets". You have a $98m underlying budget deficit according to Access Economics. Your own people said that the underlying budget deficit was more than that. You are bragging about "a cash surplus of $10m" and "no new borrowings". Well, you would not need to; you sold a whole heap of stuff. You sold a whole heap of your assets. Of course, there are no new borrowings.

Mrs Carnell: Then there are no new borrowings. Thank you. Mr Berry agrees that there are no new borrowings.

MR BERRY: That is right. The whole business is just a public relations stunt.

Mrs Carnell: But you just agreed that there are no new borrowings. We did not borrow one dollar.

MR BERRY: You said in your press release, "No new borrowings". Of course, you sold a whole heap of assets to try - - -

Mrs Carnell: You just agreed; no new borrowings. Thank you.

MR BERRY: What a joke you are!

Mr De Domenico: Keep reading from our press release. It is good stuff.

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