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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2007 ..

Mr Whitecross: Mr Speaker, it is not your job to editorialise on the debate. It is your job to keep order.

Mr Osborne: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is obviously a very embarrassing period for the Labor Party at the moment, so I am prepared to allow them to go on. It is very embarrassing. I appreciate that you are very embarrassed here, Mr Berry.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

MR BERRY: Embarrassment has never been a point of order in this place before, Mr Speaker; but in this case, even if it were, it would not apply to us because we are crowing. Our record is there, Mr Osborne. If you were picking a football team, Mr Osborne, you would pick it on performance, and here is your team.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (5.27): Mr Speaker, can we talk a little bit about the record?

MR SPEAKER: Would you mind doing that. I would take it as a singular compliment.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In 1991, if Mr Berry remembers when they came back to power, my understanding is that there was $180m in the general cash reserves. That $180m could have been paid off against unfunded superannuation liabilities, but it was not, Mr Speaker. By the time we got into power in February or March 1995 - - -

Mr Osborne: How much was left?

MRS CARNELL: Zero. They had spent the lot. There were no general cash reserves any longer, no capacity to play hollow logs; they had spent it all. They had not paid it off against their unfunded superannuation liability. They had spent it on programs. They had spent it on things they thought they would get re-elected on, Mr Speaker. They were not re-elected because the community knew better. They had managed to totally run down the Consolidated Fund. There were no general cash reserves by the time we came to government in 1995, and there was a significant unfunded superannuation liability. As Mr Osborne has said, it has been running up from zero in 1989. The Auditor-General, in his report, suggested that as of 30 June 1996 the unfunded superannuation liability was $602m. Think back to that time. Think back to last year's Estimates Committee proceedings. Do you remember those opposite scaremongering about superannuation liability when it was raised by the Government? When we raised it as an issue, not this year but last year, that did need to be addressed. What did those opposite do? They scaremongered. They indicated shock, horror, just as Mr Berry did a minute ago, saying that employees' entitlements were to be eroded.

What are we seeing here? We are not seeing an opposition that is interested at all in addressing the problem, not even a little bit. In fact, quite the opposite. Mr Berry just said, "How could we have a new scheme that is not at least as good, from the perspective of all new employees, as the old schemes?". That is basically what he said. Mr Speaker, that does not give an awful lot of options, I have to tell you, for the Government.

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