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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2501 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

a measure of the capacity of the Executive to consume liquid refreshments during an entire fiscal year or

all of the above?

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Kaine for that question. Having anticipated his question, I have been helpfully provided with a glossary of accrual accounting terms which I assure him I have been assiduously poring over in the last few weeks. Liquidity is the ease with which funds can be raised from the sale of assets. In the context of the ACT it means, therefore, the extent to which our assets exceed our liabilities. On that basis, I am not sure which of the three categories in Mr Kaine's question it falls into, but he can make his own guess based on my answer.

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, what executive positions within the Departments of Urban Services, Education and Community Services, and Health and Community Care will be reviewed in accordance with the Cullen Egan Dell methodology due to the transfer of policy functions to the Chief Minister's Department?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am very happy to take that question on notice. Obviously that is an organisational issue, not one that would be addressed by any of the Ministers here.

MR CORBELL: I ask a supplementary question. Perhaps the Chief Minister can take this one on notice too. Can the Chief Minister say what savings will be returned to the ACT budget with the accompanying downgrading of executive positions in these departments following the loss of policy functions for which these executives were responsible?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I suspect this supplementary question does include new information, but one thing I can say is that the reorganisation of the ACT Government was not put in place to save dollars. In fact, we made it clear that what we were doing was maintaining the same sorts of staff levels. I am very pleased that Mr Corbell asked me why we have done it. We have gone down the path of reorganisation - - -

Mr Corbell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have not asked the Chief Minister why at all. "Why" does not emerge in any of my questions. I certainly have not asked why. I wanted to know what the savings were. If she cannot answer that question, she can take it on notice. I ask you to rule on relevance, Mr Speaker.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, he indicated that the reason was to save money. I have indicated that the reason was not to save money. We did it for a number of other reasons which I am about to speak about. We did the reorganisation not to save money but because we as a government had moved from a $344m operating loss that those opposite left the ACT. Yesterday, when that question was asked, Mr Humphries showed that it was nothing to do with ACTEW at all. We had done the reorganisation because

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