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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (5 May) . . Page.. 1359 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

When you put a budget together you have where you start, where you finished last year, and where you think you will finish, which is around about a $150m operating loss. We wanted to get down to $90m. We have programs in place to achieve that. You have to add on the extra pressures on the budget on top of the $90m, because they are things we did not plan for last year. Are you listening, Mr Stanhope, because it might just help?

Then you have to take off the $37m in extra money that we got. That meant we had to make some extra savings to get down to the $63m, but we did that, Mr Speaker. That proved that we could reduce the operating loss by a significant amount of money this year, and move the Territory next financial year into the black for the first time since self-government.

MR SPEAKER: Do you have a supplementary question, Mr Stanhope?

MR STANHOPE: We were entertained, Chief Minister. Mr Speaker, last year's budget papers, referring to the increase in general revenue grants relativities, said in respect of the ACT that the increase in the relativity has been primarily caused by a decline in the ACT's capacity to raise own source revenue. Will the Chief Minister confirm that in fact the Grants Commission bailed her out as a result of her failure to repel the relentless attack on Canberra by her Liberal mates on the hill?

MS CARNELL: I find it very difficult to understand how that was a supplementary to the first question, but I am happy to answer it. In terms of the increases in relativity, the reason that our relativity improved is that we had to undo the absolutely atrocious job done in 1993 by the previous Labor Government when they went to the Commonwealth Grants Commission. We believe, and have argued for many years now, that the Commonwealth Grants Commission made a number of mistakes in 1993 simply because those opposite put forward a crummy submission.

We had to explain to the Commonwealth Grants Commission and argue with them at length over a number of submissions about the cost of running the ACT; things inherent in this city that are not the same in other cities, such as the economies of scale issues, the spread out nature, and the Y plan.

All of those issues had to be addressed, and were addressed at length, Mr Speaker, to the extent, as many people know, that we took members of the Commonwealth Grants Commission up in the air over Canberra in a plane to show them just how spread out Canberra is and how difficult it is to run things like bus systems in a city like Canberra. We also argued with the Commonwealth Grants Commission about issues of education, such as the fact that our retention rates are significantly higher than in the rest of Australia and that they should not penalise us for those sorts of things. Those are exactly the things that those opposite should have been arguing in 1993, and obviously did not succeed at.

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