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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1438 ..

MR SPEAKER: It either is or it is not, Mr Quinlan.

MR QUINLAN: He did not answer my first question in full. In a press release released today he said that our cash and investments will be worth $1.94 billion by 2005. His own budget says that our employee entitlements will sum to in excess of $2.2 billion at the same date. How can there be flexibility in the investment? Are you going to be spending people's long service leave and annual leave to get you through these cash crises which you have set yourself up for?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, yes the territory will have employee entitlements accruing of a certain amount-I will not adopt the exact figure Mr Quinlan has put before I check the figure in the budget. But, yes, there may well be employee entitlements of that sort, particularly with respect to superannuation. We do not expect our employees to retire all at once in 2005 or 2004-05. That is a long-term liability for which this government has been building up our superannuation account to cover in the future.

Mr Speaker, we have, as you know, a plan in this budget to produce $50 million a year into our superannuation account for the next 20 years, by the end of which time we will have substantially catered for the ongoing emerging need of the territory with respect to superannuation payments into the foreseeable future without further budget supplementation. That is the provision we are making in this budget.

As far as other entitlements are concerned, Mr Quinlan said to some of the television media that the government's figures do not take into account things like holiday pay, long service leave and so on. Mr Speaker, you do not make provision in accounts of this kind for those things. You ask the agencies concerned with the payrolls to fund those things and that has always been the case in the ACT, including the time when those opposite were in office.

Mr Quinlan: $2.2 billion-it is in here.

MR HUMPHRIES: You do not put holiday pay into these accounts, Mr Quinlan. And your party did not do so when you were in government in this place. The provisions made there for employee entitlements were essentially superannuation entitlements.

Mr Quinlan: It is $2.2 billion.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, we do not have those covered at the moment. That is why we are putting in $154 million this financial year to cover those things, which is about $130 million more than you ever put into the superannuation account. And $50 million a year for the next 20 years will further support and sustain that position.

Mr Speaker, the accountant of the year has made these sorts of basic fundamental mistakes. Perhaps it is the shape of things to come.

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