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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 767 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
were 2,000 jobs, give or take, lost over the last six years as a result of the process you have been so keen to attack. Multiply that by an average of about $70,000, including overheads, and you get a result in terms of a payroll of about $150 million. If we had not shed those jobs we would not have the surplus we have today. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot attack us for losing public service jobs and then claim that the surplus we are in today is some sort of accident of history. That is having your cake and eating it too, and it does not wash.
You can quibble all you like about the figures, Mr Quinlan, but not even the best Stalinist approach to revision of history, the best George Orwell type of rewriting the things in the ministry of truth, can remove the fact that there was that figure of $344 million which your government, one day perhaps, will have to try to live down.
MR QUINLAN: As a service to government I would just let the Chief Minister know that the wages figure-
Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, is this a preamble to a supplementary question?
MR QUINLAN: You do not want the facts? The wages figure in the backcast figures was $759 million. The figure for last year was $745 million so where is the $150 million? Since 1995-96 Commonwealth funding for the ACT has improved by some $400 million while taxes and fees-
Mr Humphries: Is this a different question?
MR QUINLAN: It is relevant to the bottom line. Taxes, fees and fines are in the same neighbourhood as they were back then, despite the sacrifices on the altar of the GST. Where is the evidence that we are in surplus as a result of your economic management?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Quinlan has asked this question before on several occasions. If he likes, I will get the answers again from the previous occasions; I will go and fish them out. You asked before for the plot of ACT government expenditure over that period. It reduced in real terms. That must have some bearing, would you not think, on the size of our operating result? You do not have to be the accountant of the year to know that if you reduce your expenditure you have some impact on your operating result, be it a loss or a profit. And that is the fact here.
I will fish out the figures again for Mr Quinlan if he wants them. But, as I said before, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot keep attacking us year in, year out for cutting back on taxes. Only just yesterday I quoted in this place your attack on the hated and despicable insurance levy. How is it that we can be putting these things on and not be making a difference to the bottom line of the territory? How can that be? Is it not impossible to be making up ground through extra taxes and reduced expenditure and not make a difference?
Mr Quinlan: We are talking about a lot more ground than that, mate.
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