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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1809 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

patients on the waiting lists are waiting longer than clinically desirable and this government cannot find anything against which to allocate this $7.6 million.

We have that from a government which went to an election in 1995 promising 1,000 beds in the territory's public hospitals by the year 2000. Guess what? It is the year 2000 and the latest figures show that there are 671 beds in the public hospitals, down from 753 in the same period last year and still falling.

Mr Speaker, the government has made something of a song and dance about its initiatives in this year's budget to fund the territory's unfunded superannuation liability. Of course, this is not the first time in five years in office that the government has said that it would act on the liability. "Act", of course, is the key word. Labor appropriated $30 million to the superannuation fund in each of the years from 1992-93 to 1994-95-$30 million a year. In each of the next three years Mrs Carnell appropriated, on average, $13 million a year, almost two-thirds less.

Two years ago the government said that it would invest $40 million against the $80 million annual provision for superannuation, but that simply did not eventuate. Eighteen months ago, it said that it was imperative to sell ACTEW to deal with the problem, but that did not eventuate because the community and the Assembly rejected the rush to privatise.

In that five years, what do we have from the government in its contribution to superannuation? We have three years of an average contribution of $13 million. All the government has done about the superannuation liability problem is exacerbate it. It did repatriate capital from ACTEW to apply to the mounting liability, as Labor had suggested during the debate on the plan to sell the territory's largest public asset. It has now provided $5 million to put towards the liability. That, of course, is a wise move. It is just a little bit late to crow about it.

I note also that the government has decided to adopt two key recommendations of Mr Quinlan's superannuation committee-to establish an independent investment advisory board to control the superannuation account and to quarantine the money against use for other purposes. It has taken an inordinate amount of time for the government to act sensibly on such a critical issue.

Mr Speaker, the Assembly, and increasingly the community, is well aware that this government is more attuned to the advice of its spin doctors than to the needs of sound policy development. It is an attitude that fits well with the character of the Chief Minister, who always has an eye on the snappy headline. That character may go some way to explaining the government's disingenuous selling of its budget.

Mr Speaker, it is a good year to be Treasurer. There is more money than the government and its Treasury officials expected, even as recently as last January. There is a new policy unit to come up with initiatives in areas that the government has neglected in its years in office. But still the government cannot avoid resorting to the spin.

I spoke earlier of the spin on the Grants Commission's new calculations of relativities and the spin on the superannuation initiative. Of course, it does not stop there. The government points to its initiatives in policing and roads, for instance, to claim that it is

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