Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (8 December) . . Page.. 3254 ..

MR QUINLAN: I seek leave to speak again.

Leave granted.

MR QUINLAN: Mr Speaker, I rise to respond to the Chief Minister's second contribution to this debate. She said that this summarised the debate in a nutshell. It certainly summarised the style of the Government in a nutshell. It is one of the great coincidences of life that this audit report should land in this place on this day, halfway through the debate on ACTEW. This is poor treatment of the Assembly as a parliamentary chamber. It is the grossest of insults to all the other members of this place.

I noticed when the Chief Minister was making her commentary on this report that she had pre-prepared notes. So what we have is a contribution to the debate, an extra angle, an extra layer on their argument, for which she is prepared and this place has no opportunity to prepare for. Coincidence? No way. It is a commentary on the way this Government operates. It is a commentary on the way this Chief Minister operates, particularly in this debate.

The Chief Minister, in answering her standard dorothy dixer for the day from Mr Hird, selectively read from the report by the Australia Institute. She read a second sentence of a paragraph and accused the Australia Institute of leaving out a whole contribution to the superannuation fund. The first sentence says:

To complete the proposal, it is necessary to consider the contribution from consolidated revenue to the government's superannuation liability.

This report is saying this is how we address the accrued liability and that sentence says that is how you continue to meet the growing liability. That is a similar process to the $70m a year contribution by OFM which is included in papers used by the Government. That was a very selective use of information. Now we have this unbelievable coincidence of getting this report on this day. While we are looking at this report, let me quote from it. At page 40, under the heading "Selling Physical Assets to Provide Cash to Meet Unfunded Liabilities", it says:

The Territory has a wide range of physical assets. These include a public hospital, schools, roads, public housing, parks, electricity, water and sewerage ...

So we have a list. We heard the Chief Minister say, on reading through this: "We are never going to balance the books; we are just going to keep selling assets". The Auditor-General also said this:

Arguments against selling assets ... are generally similar to those against reducing services. There is an additional argument in the few cases where the assets being considered for sale are income producing assets ...

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .