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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 387 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

who say that they may have to close down some of their services What about these impacts? What does Mr Hird think about them and what do the Liberals in this place think about them?

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (4.34): Let me start by congratulating Mr Hird on bringing this matter of public importance into the Assembly for debate today. At the same time, I ask why it took so long for Mr Hird, a member of the Government, to raise in this place an issue of enormous import to this community and indeed to the rest of Australia. We have been expecting a GST matter of public importance in this place for some time, but we certainly were not expecting one of our own members to have to bring this matter up for debate.

I congratulate Mr Hird for the decision to make this matter of public importance public. I also have to ask why you people did not bother to do it before today. Why did it take Mr Hird to bring this matter of public importance into the public arena?

Mr Stanhope: I rise on a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have raised questions relating to the impact of the GST on ACT government services at every single hearing of the budget committees that I have attended. I have not had a cogent answer yet.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

MR HUMPHRIES: The reason we have not had Labor raising this matter in this place is explainable by looking at the behaviour and the statements, in particular, of Mr Kim Beazley, the Federal Opposition Leader; the man in recent days who has muddied the waters on the goods and services tax in the most deplorable way. Even his Federal colleagues are quietly stepping away from him, inch by inch, to make sure that they are not associated with this complete and utter muddle. This community and everybody else knows that Mr Beazley cannot possibly keep to the promises he has made with respect to the GST without something giving in the equation which he has not yet explained. He says he is going to roll back the GST without affecting the position of the States and Territories.

Let me put on the record what the benefit of the GST is to the ACT community over the next nine or 10 years. The conservative estimates that have been made by various treasuries, not just the ACT, over an eight - year period suggest that there will be an additional $11 billion in revenue to States and Territories in this country, revenue which will now be available, in the next 10 years, to spend on schools, hospitals, public safety, housing and better roads - all the things that we debate in this place week in and week out. All the things that we are criticised for not being able to provide for, because of our strained circumstances, are covered by that $11 billion.

The total benefit to the ACT in particular is conservatively estimated, from the years 2002-03 to 2009-10, to be $216.1m. I repeat, $216.1m. That buys an awful lot of community services in this place.

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