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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 826 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I have tabled a supplementary budget paper, as required under section 13 of the Financial Management Act, that provides details of the variations proposed for the affected departments and statutory authorities. Members will notice that the supplementary budget papers provide two sets of financial statements for each affected agency. They present the variation, or adjustment, to the financial position plus the revised financial statements.

Perhaps there could be other mechanisms to address some or all of these issues. However, the Assembly has previously voiced its preference that such issues be the subject of a supplementary appropriation. I also believe it is important that these issues be brought before the Assembly by an open, transparent and accountable government.

While the bill provides for appropriations of $43.244 million, the effect on the territory's operating result will be far less than this. In fact, the effect of these changes will be to reduce the surplus by only $16.032 million. The difference is simply due to a number of changes which will be budget neutral or will be a capital cost in the first instance.

I will turn to the details of the proposed appropriations shortly, but broadly speaking they fall into three categories: those that are essentially technical in nature, those that relate to unforeseen budget pressures and those that are considered necessary and worth while to pursue at this time.

Members will be well aware of my position in relation to operation surpluses-that is, my government will return a dividend to the community in the form of increased or improved services. I therefore think that in the context of the budget performance it is preferable to use the budget capacity to deal with issues which may not be critically urgent but necessary nevertheless.

I turn to the budget neutral appropriations. The bill seeks appropriations of $0.016 million for the Legislative Assembly Secretariat; $0.020 million for the Chief Minister's Department; $8.925 million for the Department of Education and Community Services, most of it relating to payments to non-government schools; and $0.028 million for the Department of Treasury.

These relate to the GST payments on services purchased on behalf of the territory. These are budget neutral, as the Australian Taxation Office makes a reimbursement of these payments. There is no operating result impact, and these payments and the reimbursements affect only the statements of cash flows.

However, as members are aware, under the Financial Management Act 1996, territorial appropriations are gross in nature, which means that the departments cannot apply these reimbursements directly towards payments, without an appropriation. These payments are clearly technical in nature and arise due to the uncertainty of all the GST arrangements as part of the GST implementation. However, due to their size, it is considered appropriate to bring these before the Assembly to be handled through a supplementary appropriation.

Other budget neutral appropriations include an additional $230,000 that specifically relates to GST payments for clubs. This is due to the quarterly GST system and the monthly gaming tax payments. Some clubs have opted to pay GST quarterly. It is simply

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