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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 8 Hansard (27 October) . . Page.. 2298 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, the words used by Mr Corbell in relation to the Liberal Party sound very much like words Mr Corbell himself used in the course of the last election when he was asked to rule out a bed tax. "It is not on our agenda" I think were words he used, or words to that effect. I wonder really, if Labor were in government today, whether that would be on the agenda or not.

Mr Speaker, the rationale behind the Government's decision to privatise ACTEW boils down to two very simple equations. Equation number one: At the moment, the ACT's taxpayers have an asset worth around $1 billion and an unfunded superannuation liability of around $700m. Equation number two: In a few years' time, if nothing is done, that billion dollar asset - ACTEW - will be worth around $500m and our unfunded superannuation liability will be close to $1 billion. It will be a complete reversal. Quite simply, the Government and this Assembly have an opportunity to both maintain the value of the taxpayers' asset and deal with the largest single financial liability hanging over the future generations of Canberrans.

Let us break this statement down into a number of components. Should we maintain the value of this asset? Can anyone in this place seriously suggest that we should stand by and simply allow $500m of taxpayers' money to disappear? If this Assembly does not have the courage to take difficult decisions in the long-term interests of the people of Canberra, then we should rightly be condemned and we should rightly give up our seats. Secondly, should we at all be addressing the question of superannuation liability? It is quite likely that most of us - in fact, all of us - in this place will not be in this place when the real crunch comes on that superannuation liability, with the possible exception of people like Mr Corbell. Older members of this place are almost certainly not going to be here when the crunch comes.

Does that absolve us from the responsibility of taking care of this issue now, particularly given that our decisions about our Public Service and the level of retirement benefit that public servants should receive are actuating the liability which our future generations will have to bear? Mr Speaker, I have young children. By the time they go out into the work force, start to pay taxes, take out mortgages and incur other liabilities which in turn bring on a liability to pay taxes at the level of average citizens, the maximum amount of impact of the superannuation problem will be hitting.

At about that stage the ACT superannuation liability will rise to something of the order of $120m a year. That is an enormous amount of superannuation liability. It is six times the cost of superannuation today. Our liability is about $20m today. It will rise over that period to, in the year 2015 or thereabouts, something like $120m, in 1998 dollars. It, of course, would be larger by then. Mr Speaker, I do not believe it is morally responsible for members of this place to pass on a debt of that kind to future citizens, particularly when that liability is not of their own making and does not relate to services made to those particular individuals.

Should we be addressing the unfunded superannuation liability? Once again, can anyone seriously suggest that we should stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this is not a real problem? It is our problem, and we should face up to it. The Labor Opposition is suggesting that we should not deal with these problems, that they are problems for

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