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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 389 ..

MS CARNELL

Members may recall that the last time the commission conducted a review of its methods was in 1993, and the ACT was the big loser. Funding was cut by 20 per cent, costing us close to $100m a year.

This time the story is much better. The commission has recommended a 16 per cent increase in general revenue funding to the ACT. This translates into an increase of just over $43m compared to our funding in the current financial year, when reductions for special allowances to the ACT are taken into account. Mr Speaker, it is quite wrong to label this a "windfall" gain, as the Canberra Times did last week, with all of the connotations of unexpected largesse that has come our way without being earned. Quite apart from the fact that this is clearly a correction for the harsh treatment meted out to the ACT by successive Federal governments, there has also been an enormous effort involved in achieving this result.

I suspect that Canberrans are thoroughly sick of hearing me speak about the rotten deal the ACT has had from the Commonwealth, given that I feel like I have been saying it every day since I came into this job four years ago. But, behind the scenes, staff from the Office of Financial Management, with support from right across the ACT Public Service, have over the past three years mounted a very strong case for increased Federal funding and have stuck to their guns in the face of criticism from other jurisdictions. Mr Speaker, I am sure that members would appreciate how much other jurisdictions were pleased to hear that the ACT was recommended to get a significant increase! We do not have a lot of friends around that table. This result, though, is a tribute to the quality of those public servants' work.

It is also why I was unimpressed, to say the least, at the actions of the Opposition in releasing incomplete and inaccurate data from the Commonwealth Grants Commission report while it was under embargo. It was irresponsible and damaging to the credibility of the ACT in intergovernmental relations.

Mr Speaker, the good outcome recommended by the Commonwealth Grants Commission, if adopted by the Federal Government, will ease some of the pressure on our budget, but it will not solve our underlying budget problem. Indeed, for once, I find myself echoing the words of Mr Quinlan when he said that this is not so much "yippee" as "phew". I agree. It will mean the difference between a task that was shaping up to be almost impossible and one that will now just be extremely difficult.

Mr Speaker, the budget that I bring down on 4 May will be my fifth. It will be the budget that takes us into the new millennium, and it will be the first budget that I have brought down in reasonably favourable conditions. Commonwealth grants are increasing; our economy is growing strongly, recording a 4.3 per cent growth in GSP, according to our most recent data; unemployment is low; and tax revenues are healthy.

This is in marked contrast to the circumstances that have shaped the budget over the last four years. I still recall vividly the sombre news that was broken to me when I sat down with Treasury officials in 1995 to begin work on my first ACT budget. The news was that the ACT's financial reserves of $180m had been run down to nothing by the previous government - they had spent all the money in the bank - Commonwealth grants

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