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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2041 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

example of beat police is one such example. Why would the government not proceed with that process, given the framework in which the decision was made? This is a selective decision by those members with the numbers on the Estimates Committee to put a view forward which was different from the view of the majority of the Assembly. I think that recommendation should be recognised for what it is.

I said there were a number of inaccuracies and errors in the report. I will touch on some of those. In paragraph 2.18 there is a comment in relation to GST revenue and the guaranteed minimum amount. It says:

Again, this assertion is made in the report but it was not tested in evidence. If a member had put to me in the course of this comment that the revenue guarantee is only for four years, I would have told them that that is not true. It is not just for four years. It is expected to be relied on for four years because that is how long it will be expected to take before the ACT goes positive on GST revenue, but the guarantee does not end then. It is a permanent guarantee. It can be relied upon at any point in the future if the territory ceases to have a positive net revenue flow from the GST, which will probably be never.

Mr Speaker, I want to refer to superannuation. The committee's comment was as follows:

note that proviso-

Previous payments by the former Labor government, which incidentally amounted to $75.1 million, were funded from the territory's cash reserves. Members can see that it does not make a great deal of sense to move money from cash reserves into superannuation because all you do is take it from a place where you can use it flexibly-it is money sitting in the bank-to a place where it is inflexibly deposited and is still money in the bank. What is the point of that? Again, this issue was not put to the minister, or any minister, before the committee decided to write up all about this in its report. It is another bit of stuff pulled off the wall. Somebody who has a bee in the bonnet about this pulled it off the wall and threw it into the committee's report. The fact that it was not tested against the evidence is apparently irrelevant.

Mr Speaker, in paragraph 5.4 committee members criticised the fact that a transfer was not disclosed in the budget papers and could only be found in the Department of Education and Community Services' ownership agreement. Members will have forgotten, or perhaps were not even aware, that an instrument was tabled in the Assembly on 10 May transferring this appropriation, and the reconciliation was noted in the budget papers at page 253. Despite the comment that it was not disclosed in the budget papers, it is disclosed at page 253.

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