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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1820 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

to expand local businesses with strong environmental and ethical credentials, rather than paying out pocket money to large companies that would still be doing business in Canberra anyway.

MR QUINLAN ( 4.01): The first thing I would like to do is respond to Mr Osborne's congratulations to the government-and if that is what he believes, that is what he should say. However, I should remind him that the ACT under self-government did not start out in the black and somehow fall into the red. It started out with tremendous administrative disadvantages. The comments that Mr Osborne made and the credit that the government would like to take do the genuine people who worked in the early years through much tighter times than we enjoy today a grave disservice.

As far as this budget and its presentation are concerned, I really do not understand the psyche of the Carnell style, perpetuated or aped by Mr Humphries. You find yourself in a good position but you cannot help yourself-you have still got to use crook figures to claim that it is even better. You would have been better off and you might have maintained a degree of integrity if you had used the right figures.

I want to refer to a topic that I have raised a number of times in the last week or two and I intend to continue to pursue-

Ms Carnell: Nobody believes you.

MR QUINLAN: Nobody believes me? Is the point that I am wrong or that nobody believes me? Ms Carnell said that there was a $344 million loss in Labor's last year of government. This can be found at page 20-the back page-of Budget Paper No 1. Is that the claim? Was this inherited from Labor? I would love Ms Carnell to go on record and be more specific about her claim. In fact, this is a result in a year that was within the complete control of the Carnell government.

Ms Carnell: It was the first accrual budget.

MR QUINLAN: It was not. It was a recast result. Your budget for the year was $140 million and I presume your budget was based on the election promises that got you elected.

Within this $344 million there is a $91 million abnormal item. But you happily add that to the operating result because it makes the number bigger. It is a crook figure: it is crook to use the year; it is crook to include the abnormal item. As I said the other day, as a result of that this is a defining moment for you guys. This is who you are. You are the people that would use that sort of misleading information.

In relation to the budget itself, over the period since the year you were elected we have seen a very substantial increase in federal funding. If we start with this huge amount of $344 million-if we even accepted the $344 million was ours-you can whip off about $150 million straight away for additional government funding. You could whip off a similar amount for the additional taxes that are being received now rather than then.

Mr Humphries: They are the decisions we made to get there.

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