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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2390 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: If you would be kind enough to listen to what I have to say, Mr Stanhope, you might learn something. Mr Speaker, those who have done so much to wreck that course of action obviously would be very anxious to make sure that the Government did not achieve that result, and when we do achieve the result they are prepared to ascribe false reasons to the fact that we have done so.

Mr Speaker, at the time of that statement we tabled a revised operating statement - I table that revised operating statement now - indicating very clearly that the Territory was not going to achieve an operating surplus based on the merger of ACTEW. As the Opposition well know, from having asked questions about it at question time today, we do not have any indication at this stage of whether a merger will be possible because of the lack of clarity of the position of New South Wales at this time, or this Assembly for that matter. Our surplus is not based on merging ACTEW with some organisation in New South Wales. It is based on our hard work. It is based on what Towers Perrin found was a reduction in our unfunded superannuation liability, which in turn is due to a number of things, particularly to our effort to downsize the Public Service, strict controls of the staffing numbers that have occurred under this Government, and the containment of growth in wages through enterprise bargaining agreements.

In the past three years alone the size of the ACT Public Service has been reduced by approximately 2,000 positions, or 10 per cent. Labor has bleated loudly at every one of those jobs being reduced, every downsizing. I might say that it was reduced through natural attrition, not through sackings. They bleated about all of those reductions in the size of the work force, but that is why today we can say optimistically to the citizens of this Territory that we have an operating surplus on the way and better news for the Territory in terms of its capacity to be sustainable into the future.

There is an irony in this, of course, Mr Speaker, in that those opposite, who have attacked every painful step of the way, every step the Chief Minister took as Treasurer of this Territory to get us to the point where we have an operating surplus, were the first ones out with their plates, their knives and their forks and telling us where we should be spending the surplus we have now achieved. They say, "Now you have done all the hard work, here is how we are going to spend the money", while rubbing their hands. No doubt that is the approach we will see from this Opposition.

Mr Speaker, that approach is dishonest. We are here today because we have made hard decisions. We are here today because we have raised revenue, such as emergency services levies, and because we have reduced expenditure on things like the School of Arts. We made those hard decisions that have not been popular, but we made them in order to achieve an important goal, to achieve an operating surplus.

Now, why are we looking for an operating surplus, Mr Speaker? It is not because we want to gladden the hearts of accountants and financial analysts the length and breadth of the country. That is not the reason we are doing it. We are doing it because it gives us the power as a community to be able to make decisions about our future. It gives us the chance to enhance our social capital as well as our financial capital, if you like; to get to the point where we have the money to be able to make decisions about important new

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