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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1159 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, prior to the Ministerial Council endorsing a draft Statement of Estimated Payments (SOEP), State and Territory Treasurers were required to be satisfied that their budgetary positions were no worse off than had the new taxation reforms not been implemented.

Such a budgetary assurance was by no means easily determined given the changes resulting from tax reform and the inherent difficulties associated with comparing GST revenue to general revenue assistance funding between 1999-2000 and 2000-01.

Mr Speaker, from a State and Territory perspective, it was also important that the Commonwealth complied with paragraph 5 (v) of the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) which highlights that the Commonwealth will continue to provide Specific Purpose Payments (SPPs) to the States and Territories without cutting aggregate SPPs as part of the reform process.

In this context, Mr Speaker, I was able to offer my endorsement to the SOEP as:

� the SOEP delivered on the Guaranteed Minimum Amount;

� Heads of Treasuries (HoTs) at its meeting of 25 February 2000 raised no objections to the SOEP report;

� there were no surprises, with the estimates remaining the same as the draft report discussed at the HoTs meeting; and

� although all States and Territories had difficulties in reconciling the Commonwealth's SPP estimates to those in their forward estimates, a examination indicated that this funding broadly complied with the aggregate guarantee in the IGA:

aggregate SPPs to all States and Territories are estimated to increase by $792.8 million, or 4.5 per cent between 1999-2000 and 2000-01 , and

aggregate SPPs for the ACT are expected to increase from $315.0 million in 1999-2000 to $345.7million in 2000-01, an increase of $30.7 million or 9.7 per cent.

Mr Speaker, I am happy to report that the Commonwealth did reiterate its commitment under the IGA not to cut aggregate SPPs to the States and Territories as part of the reform processes.

Mr Speaker, in regard to SPPs, however, all States and Territories still consider that the meaning of 'aggregate guarantee' and how this will be monitored in the future requires further development.

As such, ongoing work has been identified that should help clarify whether or not the SPP guarantee has been fulfilled at a future date when:

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