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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4268 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Then we had Mr Quinlan, who no doubt was still smarting from Mr Berry's snub at not being included in the A team of candidates at the Lakeside Arena event, or stunt, accusing the Government of "ripping money out of ACTEW", to quote again. You would expect those opposite, if they had any political or moral principles at all, to back up this absolute indignation with a commitment to reverse those budget decisions. You would expect that, would you not, Mr Speaker? That is a pretty fair thing to say. You would expect at least one of these sums of $100m to be in the next budget, one that those opposite, I am sure, are hoping to control. In other words, they would leave the money in ACTEW and not use it for the sorts of things we are using it for - the good of the whole community; things like building roads, schools and health centres. But they have said that that is not what they would do, Mr Speaker, or that is what we thought. It is quite within their power, of course, to make that commitment. It is entirely up to the next ACT government to decide whether the further $100m is required from ACTEW next financial year, through either the sale of the street lights or some other arrangement. Quite simply, no final decision had been made, and we made that clear as well in the estimates process.

The problem for the Labor Party is that they have trouble distinguishing between income and spending; they have trouble reading a balance sheet. We have seen that time and time again. They also seem to have trouble working out that if you remove the $200m from the budget you will have a major black hole in it to fill. Now, $200m is a lot of money, Mr Speaker. It is all very well for Mr Berry, Mr Whitecross and Mr Quinlan to run media stunts and express mock outrage at these payments, but they have said nothing about how they would make up the shortfall. Mr Speaker, this is really important. I went through Mr Berry's working capital manifesto, looking for answers on just how this $200m shortfall would be made up.

Mr Berry: I take a point of order. There is a question about the length of this answer. It really sounds like a ministerial statement. This morning the Chief Minister was seeking to put small speeches on the table. Maybe she could consider the same thing with her answers.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order. The Chief Minister is answering the question, as she sees fit.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, there is no point of order about the length of speeches. This is an abuse of question time and an abuse of standing orders. There is no standing order about the length of answers to questions.

MR SPEAKER: Exactly; there is no point of order.

Mr Moore: It should be concise and confined to the subject matter, under standing order 118(a).

MRS CARNELL: But they are interjecting too much. Mr Speaker, I think it would be important for all members of this Assembly to take on board or to look at Mr Berry's working capital manifesto and work out just where they were going to make up this $200m shortfall. It is curious, is it not, Mr Speaker, because there is absolutely no reference to the $200m anywhere?

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