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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2058 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (8.09), in reply: Mr Speaker, in closing this debate, I thank members for their support for the Appropriation Bill 1999-2000 (No 3). It never gives the government any pleasure to have to come back and seek additional money for an area of government activity, and this is no exception.
The process of coming back to the Assembly and clearly putting a case for additional appropriations is a healthier process than the alternative. The Assembly can at least draw some comfort from the fact that both of these areas are matters that the government either has fully addressed in terms of rising costs to the community or is in the process of addressing and they are matters that, with some good management and perhaps a little bit of luck, we will not need to come back and deal with in the same way in the future.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Debate resumed from 30 March 2000, on motion by Mr Humphries:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SPEAKER: Is it the wish of the Assembly to debate this order of the day concurrently with the Financial Relations Agreement Consequential Amendments Bill 2000? There being no objection, that course will be followed. I remind members that in debating executive business order of the day No 7, they may also address their remarks to executive business order of the day No 8.
MR QUINLAN (8.11): I would like to say a few words on these bills. These bills are the instruments by which the ACT embraces the GST. The opposition has been quite happy to support the passage of the implementation bills that make that possible and the opposition accepts the inevitability of the GST, but it does not necessarily follow that we support these bills.
This weekend marks the commencement of an era of some pain for low and middle income families. We will see the beginning of the end of "never ever land", as John Howard's, Mr Costello's and, to some extent, Meg Lees' goods and services tax actually is visited upon us.
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