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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 719 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (4.46): Mr Speaker, I move the following amendment to Mr Berry's amendments:

Proposed amendment to paragraph (3), omit "19 August", substitute "17 June".

Essentially, it puts into the amendments the reporting by the Estimates Committee by 17 June, to ensure that it is possible to pass the budget before the beginning of the next financial year to which it refers. Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell has already indicated very clearly the reasons for this. I would say very simply that it is quite important that we obtain the benefit of being able to have a full-year effect of the budget we bring down.

I want to add only one thing to the arguments Mrs Carnell has already put to the Assembly. Members should be aware that the Government, of course - you would hardly be surprised to hear this - has been working on its budget for some months now. Indeed, I dare say that the budget is four-fifths put together. If the Assembly is to tell us now - just a few weeks before the budget is to be brought down, even though the Chief Minister announced at the last sitting that she wanted to bring it down and pass it before the end of the financial year - that the budget is not to have full-year effect, is not to be passed until, say, August or September, more likely September, then, Mr Speaker, it quite naturally follows that the budget will have to be very substantially recast.

Ms McRae: What a lot of rubbish!

MR HUMPHRIES: It does, because revenue raising measures, for example, that apply for the full year have been calculated to have a full-year effect.

Ms McRae: Nonsense! You are just grasping at straws. You should have negotiated properly.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, Ms McRae apparently does not understand this process. A budget which applies for the full financial year, particularly as far as revenue raising measures are concerned, has a very different impact from a budget which applies for only part of the year. Members will have seen lots of budgets brought down saying in the explanatory notes to the particular provision, "The effect in this financial year is X and the full-year effect is Y", and they are different. Why are they different? Because a budget brought down in the course of a financial year to which it applies has only a partial-year effect.

It is a very important argument, Mr Speaker. The budget is very substantially put together. We are going to have to recast the budget if members wish to remove the full-year effect that we had planned on for both expenditure and revenue measures.

Members interjected.

MR HUMPHRIES: What was the phrase Mr Kaine used today about the Opposition? Was it nugget heads? I think that is a very appropriate phrase, Mr Kaine. If they do not understand this matter, if they do not understand what this means - - -

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