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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2123 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That is particularly evident in the comments she made and which she did not repeat tonight, which I take as some retraction of sorts. I have to take my benefits when I get them, whichever way I get them, I suppose; but the allegation she made before was that there had been a cut of, I think, $700,000 in the environment budget for 1997-98. She trumpeted that in press releases, some of which were reported in the media - that the Government has cut environment spending by $700,000. When we got down to tintacks in the Estimates Committee, what that claim rested upon was the assertion that an amount which had been spent in the 1996-97 financial year to remedy contaminated sites was not being spent again in the 1997-98 financial year and therefore was being cut, and therefore environment spending in the 1997-98 financial year was being cut.

Ms Horodny: That was compensation. That was buying out people's houses. It should not have been in the environment budget in the first place.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, if that is the case, I can warn Ms Horodny about a few other impending cuts coming up. The ACT Government, using Ms Horodny's logic - whichever government it might be - is going to cut the budget of the ACT Electoral Commission by over $1m in 1998-99. I think $1.2m is the exact figure. There will be a cut of that much in the Electoral Commission's budget. Is that not shocking? The reason, of course, is that in 1997-98 there is going to be an election and we increased the spending in that year by $1.2m to pay for the election; but in 1998-99 we do not have an election, touch wood, and - - -

Mr Wood: You cannot be sure of that.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will come and touch you, Mr Wood. Therefore, we will have less in the budget that year for that kind of spending. That is the same logic. We had a specific task on contaminated sites. It was to remedy a number of identified sites in the Territory and put them back in the right condition. We have done that. We have spent that money and we do not have to spend it again in the next financial year. To claim that that is a cut in spending on the environment is irresponsible.

Mr Kaine: It is also untrue.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is also quite untrue and, Ms Horodny, you really ought to correct the record.

Ms Horodny: It was irresponsible of you to put compensation buyouts into the environment budget in the first place.

MR HUMPHRIES: She says we should not have put compensation buyouts in the budget in the first place. Okay, Mr Speaker, I will rise to the bait. Let us suppose we made a mistake, for argument's sake, by putting compensation buyouts in the environment budget in the first place. Contaminated sites are part of the environment, I would have thought, and that is the logical place to put them; but, putting that to one side for one minute, okay, we put them wrongly in the first place. If you knew that, Ms Horodny, and you knew that it was from that source that we were finding that $700,000 in this financial year, why did you claim that it was being cut when it was being taken out in the next financial year?

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