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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 579 ..

MR HUMPHRIES

draw up budgets - I think it is also very clear that the position that they take to the electorate is inconsistent and cannot be sustained in this sort of debate.

Let me take up a few points made by other members in this debate. Mr Kaine made a few comments which I think need to be rebutted. He said that there was no link between the ACTEW sale and the recurrent budget. That simply is not true. It simply defies what has been said extensively in this debate. First of all, Mr Speaker, the failure to sell ACTEW means that we now have to find money from the recurrent budget, since there are not any other sales which the Assembly particularly likes either, apparently, to fund our superannuation liabilities. There is a direct link between the failure of the ACTEW sale and future recurrent budget impacts. The other way in which the ACTEW sale would have impacted on the recurrent budget is through the retirement of debt. We proposed to spend $190m of that sale to retire government debt and to reduce our interest payments per annum by $10m. That would have had an impact on the recurrent budget from day one. I am, frankly, astonished that Mr Kaine would have failed to notice that particular aspect of the ACTEW sale proposal.

Mr Kaine has made the comment in other debates about the budget that the Chief Minister consistently failed to address in her previous budgets what he considers to be the big issues. He actually said in one of the other debates on this subject that that is not expenditure reduction and that is not revenue raising. I would like to know from Mr Kaine, if he is listening to this debate, what are the big issues if it is not looking at expenditure reduction or improvements in our revenue capacity. What are the big issues? It obviously is not asset sales because he rejected that in the case at least of ACTEW. What are the big issues, then, if it is not that? Mr Speaker, rather than quote at length, I table comments Mr Kaine made about the 1995 Carnell Liberal Government budget and the 1997 Carnell Liberal Government budget because the comments he has made there are inconsistent with what he has said in this debate about those budgets. He praised those budgets for addressing the big issues - he praised them extensively - and yet he now says that they did not do the job. I wonder why he has changed his view.

Mr Speaker, let me come back for one moment to this question of the ALP's views about expenditure and revenue issues and about privatisation. We are told that the ALP is opposed to privatisation. If the results of last year's annual conference are anything to go by, I can well understand why they would say that. It is obviously an accurate statement. But it is worth recording very emphatically for the record that the ALP itself proposed going into the last election, the 1998 election, to privatise - that is what they characterised it as - streetlights through the sale of streetlights proposal which they attacked in opposition but actually proposed to do in the "Working Capital" document. Members will recall that "Working Capital" was predicated on taking the Government's forward estimates and building on them for a number of other ALP initiatives. Those Government forward estimates included the sale of the streetlights. The ALP, therefore, adopted the sale of the streetlights as a way of meeting its budget target. So, when you hear them say that they are opposed to the sale of the streetlights, you have got to ask them why they have changed their mind.

Mr Speaker, I want to mention very briefly in this debate the pressures on the Justice and Community Safety portfolio. Clearly, we have a major cost pressure source from prisoner numbers. They have risen from 81 prisoners in New South Wales gaols as at

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