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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (13 February) . . Page.. 9 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

The committee is concerned to ensure that this Assembly still receives performance information following the establishment of the ActewAGL joint venture. We are anecdotally aware of complaints about the level of maintenance, the level of preventative maintenance and the number of outages that are occurring with electricity supply. There are reasonably comprehensive statistics contained in the Actew reports of the past. We would like to be assured that this house and the people of Canberra are still given that information, even though we have flogged off half of our public utility.

We believe that a user liaison committee ought to be set up for the users of InTACT and the Office of Information Technology and Multimedia. There are a lot of unhappy campers amongst the ACT administration because of the service they get from InTACT and the price they pay for it. It would appear that their complaints fall on deaf ears. We think the government has a responsibility to set up some sort of user group to ensure that there is a formal channel by which users can express their needs and their dissatisfaction with the process as it is set up today.

We recommend that the government undertake a review of the options for reporting superannuation investments when we look at annual reports. In this territory we have seen a budget for the last completed financial year which predicted a deficit of $3 million. We have also seen a report that says that the final position was a surplus of $87 million, which has given rise to a lot of proposals for further expenditure, et cetera. We asked for a reconciliation of those figures, as you would, and we found that there is considerable impact on that number by the transient value of investments with market fluctuations and a specific measure taken on 30 June. This can distort results, and we think investment performance and investment values should be separated from the reporting of the bottom line. It is a most important consideration, given the debates that are building up now, as we move towards an election, about what government should spend.

Various people have made recommendations about how the government should handle its surplus. First of all, we should assure ourselves that it is a real number. We know that, because of changes the government has implemented in the accounting systems, in excess of $20 million of any surplus is totally illusory. It is about accounting adjustments to correct previous errors, previous overstatements, which were included in a figure of $344 million, as I recall-a figure the government keeps throwing around quite dishonestly. It is a figure inflated by an overstatement that is still being corrected by a different accounting method. After three years in this place I have come to understand how averse this government is to putting out the facts.

Mr Humphries: The Auditor-General said it was the right figure. Don't you agree with him?

MR QUINLAN: The Chief Minister interjects that the Auditor-General said that it was the right figure. The Auditor-General said over a year ago in an estimates hearing that it was a backcast figure that only got a cursory glance, because he was auditing the next year's figures. I refer you, Mr Humphries, to the Hansard of those estimates, to when we had decent estimates hearings before they were corrupted by the processes that you introduced. I recommend that you access Hansard, have a look and get somewhere near the facts-a passing acquaintance.

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