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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 783 ..

Mr Whitecross: The Commonwealth funding was not $3m.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Wood did not say that the Commonwealth funding was $2.36m. He said, and I quote his press release, "expenditure on commonwealth cases at 95/96 levels". That was $3.006m, Mr Wood. It was never $2.36m. The Commonwealth offered $2.1m for 1997-98 in their initial offer. In 1995-96 they paid $2.36m but we spent $3.006m. The subsidy that we had been giving to the Commonwealth, particularly under several years of Labor government - a subsidy you never were prepared to pick up and address, apparently - was exposed by this process, by the work that we did, and the ACT demanded that that subsidy of $646,000 by the ACT of the Commonwealth should end. Indeed, the result of that negotiation was that the ACT negotiated $3.006m - an extra $906,000 on the Commonwealth's first offer. It was a very embarrassing gaffe for the shadow Attorney-General to make in his first media release.

Mr Wood concluded by saying that the details needed to be provided as soon as possible. After he issued that press release, he got in touch with my office and asked whether he could have the details. I would have thought that the request for details should have preceded the press release saying that the details were not available. Following the provision of the details, he very quickly issued a second press release which rather changed the tone of the thing. Instead of saying "Legal aid; has humphries lost", it quickly became "Two questions to Mr Humphries". The tone very quickly changed.

The first question he asked was, "Will the funding be $2.36m or will it be $3.006m?". I have already made it perfectly clear that the ACT would not accept anything less than $3.006m. That was perfectly explicit and he should have realised that before he put out his press release. The second question was, "Will all the money be passed on to Legal Aid?". I would have thought that Mr Wood, as a former Minister, would know what a specific purpose payment is. It is a payment from the Commonwealth which must be spent on particular matters. Will the money that we have obtained from the Commonwealth be passed on to Legal Aid? Yes, it will.

Mr Whitecross: What about the subsidy money you have saved?

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, that will be passed on to Legal Aid as well, Mr Whitecross; but that was not the question Mr Wood asked. I understand the embarrassment of these matters. This morning Mr Whitecross rose in his place and angrily denounced a cheap shot where one party seeks to embarrass another party. We are in a very disadvantageous position vis-a-vis the Commonwealth. We took them on and we won on this issue. Did we get any credit from the Opposition? No, we did not. We got attacked. Here we have an opposition opposing for the sake of opposing, prepared to denigrate the achievements of a government when they come forward. It tells you what kind of government they would make if at the election next February they were chosen to lead this Territory.

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