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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 578 ..

MR HUMPHRIES

the Alliance Government. It attacked that proposal in the 1990 budget unmercifully, and yet when they came back into government in 1991 the tax was retained. There are a number of other taxes I could apply in the same way. They vehemently opposed the debits tax, and yet when they went to the last election, the 1998 ACT election, they took no steps towards promising to remove that tax, which would suggest to me that they intended fully, in government, to retain that tax.

I have to say, Mr Speaker, that it really is not consistent or sustainable in a logical way to say that you are opposed to a tax, but then not do anything to take it off when you have the opportunity to do so, either in an election context when you are outlining your program for the future, or when you are actually back in government. I would ask members simply to bear in mind that the Labor Party historically is the high-taxing party. The Labor Party believes in high taxation and high expenditure. That is fine; we accept that that is their position. It is a philosophy of government which is quite a respectable position in a sense. It is quite sustainable. You can argue for it very strongly. But to claim to be a party that wants to spend a lot on behalf of the community and therefore has to tax a lot to do so and yet oppose new taxation measures, particularly those in line with what happens in other States, is just not consistent and just not sustainable.

The Labor Party has opposed a very large proportion of the Carnell Government's expenditure reductions. Again, it is a party that proposes high expenditure measures and that probably wants to spend more per capita than the Liberal Government would spend, so there is some more credibility in that line. But the Labor Party's opposition to reductions in expenditure is consistent only if it is prepared to come back to this place when next in government and promise to reverse those decisions to cut spending. The experience in every case when the Follett Government took office from the Alliance Government in 1991 was that they did not do so. None of the reductions in outlays was ever reversed by the Follett Government. To the best of my recollection - I am happy to be corrected by Mr Wood - not one was ever reversed.

So, when we hear the Labor Party say that they oppose the reductions in expenditure and they oppose new taxes, the question has to be asked: "Are you going to change that position?". Almost invariably - there might be some exceptions, I grant that - in practice they will not do that. They have also opposed privatisation as a device, whether by that name or in some other way. They have characterised sale and leaseback, for example, as a form of privatisation. In fact, they have characterised corporatisation as a form of privatisation.

They say that those things are also to be opposed and they do not support them happening. That is fair enough; I can understand their position on that. I point out that Labor governments everywhere else in Australia have used those devices and the reason that many of those have been used is that in the case of sale and leaseback, for example, it has actually been a more desirable way of improving cash flows for government than borrowing has been. If they are saying, "No, we will not use that. We will not use these de facto privatisation things. We will borrow directly", then they have to be clear that what they are saying is that they want to increase government borrowings. That, of course, puts at risk our AAA credit rating. Mr Speaker, although I respect the ALP's position in this debate - they believe that governments and governments alone have to

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