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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1828 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Then we had Mr Quinlan's claim that, apart from the GST component, the final budget would be no different to the draft budget. He said, "There would be not one iota of difference between these two documents. We were told what we are going to get and the government would accept no change, no compromise, no adjustment between the draft and the final." As we know, that is also untrue, that that is also going out the window. It is another false claim.

It was claimed just before or when the budget was brought down that the predicted budget surplus to be delivered by the government was not a real surplus. That claim evaporated the day the budget was brought down, so that did not last very long either. Now, we are told that the budget is an attempt to reinvent Ms Carnell. I suppose that, too, will last for as long as the other claims about this budget.

Mr Stanhope went through a list of indicators that he says prove the ACT is not looking as good as the government makes it out to be; that show that things are actually getting a little bit nasty around here and that "the good times cannot last, ladies and gentlemen". These days many indicators are produced of our economy and society. It would be an extremely lazy person who would not be able to find a few indicators of something not being particularly rosy, no matter how good the indicators were overall.

I notice that Mr Stanhope, in running through his list, did not mention unemployment, which is standing at its lowest level in the decade.

Mr Quinlan: Actually, he did. Not the lowest in the decade, but he did mention unemployment.

MR HUMPHRIES: He mentioned employment growth. He said the unemployment figures are excellent, and the participation rate is excellent. The one thing that has a little bit of a dark cloud over it is employment growth, and that is what Mr Stanhope took up to prove that things are not going so well. What we have is a person who, in looking at the beautiful picture, focuses on a smudge and says, "This is terrible." What sort of an objective assessment of this budget is that? Mr Stanhope did not mention state final demand. He did not mention tourism accommodation. He did not mention housing finance. He did not mention retail trade. He did not mention job vacancies. He did not mention business confidence. He did not mention dozens of other indicators which are quite consistent.

The fact is that this territory is in good shape at the moment. Apparently none of this is to do with the ACT government. It has just happened. I would like to know why it is that in the early part of the period that we were in office and things were going somewhat pear shape and bad, particularly with the federal government's intervention in respect of Commonwealth public service numbers, we were to blame? Why was it our fault, not the Commonwealth government's fault, that things were going pear shape? Now they are going well, somebody else is taking the credit. Mr Quinlan talked about the need for a bit of honesty in the budget figures. A bit of honesty in some of the comments about the budget would also not go astray.

Mr Berry had a long list of things to say. It was the usual Wayne Berry thing. He spoke about how dreadful it was that teachers were given only 11.6 per cent. He was depressed about waiting lists and a whole range of other things. I kept thinking to myself, "What

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