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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1937 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The response continues:

adoption of an accommodation strategy leading to ongoing savings of $8m per annum; -

getting us to $20m -

partnering arrangements for InTACT leading to sustainable savings of $3m per annum; -

that takes us to $23m -

a smaller senior executive service providing savings of $1m per annum ...

That takes us to $24m. The transfer of works and commercial services and a series of other small amounts are added in. As I see it, and as I think the Auditor-General saw it, there are two parts to the operating loss. The first part is the superannuation costs that have to be dealt with. Quite clearly, neither Labor governments nor this Liberal Government have as yet effectively dealt with the operating loss associated with superannuation. It is an issue that Mr Osborne raised in his initial response to the budget. I think it is a very important issue.

As far as I am concerned, until we have a sustainable system in the budget, there are no areas of the budget which people can feel comfortable with or which are not open for challenge and change of priorities. If you take out the roughly $200m that is associated with superannuation and the $25m that the Government has saved, you realise that, apart from that superannuation deficit and the normal operating loss, we still have a gap of some $60m. There were a series of ways that it was made up this year and in previous years. Last year it was the patch-up process of sale and lease-back; this year it is $100m from ACTEW, which also goes to paying a little money - you could consider it as such - to paying a little of our debt; and next year it is the possibility of the sale of light poles. But none of that goes to the sustainability, Mr Speaker.

I would suggest to the Chief Minister that the first and most significant step - and I see from her response that there is some resistance to this - is to realign our taxation system with New South Wales. Immediately we do that, there is another $18.8m; taking us that much closer to closing that gap. The only way we are going to close that gap is by looking for small amounts in the budget, as indeed the Chief Minister has identified in her response to the budget - $10m here, $2m or $3m there. This is how it is going to be made up. Let me emphasise again that one of the important ways of going about this - and, as I recall, it is additional to that $18.8m - is to adopt a bed tax. It is a very good idea. Do you notice a bed tax? No. I was recently in Darwin. It was part of the bill. You do not not go somewhere because there happens to be a bed tax. The old argument that people would stay in Queanbeyan hotels instead of staying in hotels in Canberra because of the bed tax has gone. It was always a ludicrous argument, anyway; but now it has completely disappeared.

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