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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1461 ..

MR QUINLAN: To whom did I make that promise?

Mr Moore: Keri Phillips, on radio.

MR QUINLAN: What did I say? I said that if an independent body can give a rational explanation for that and attribute it to the government, that is fine.

Mr Moore: You believe the Auditor-General on some things, but you don't believe him when it affects us.

MR QUINLAN: Okay. Today I have referred to the Grants Commission's assessment, their standardisation accounts, and yes, the Treasurer is absolutely right that these are different from accrual accounting. They are cash accounting, and they are cash accounting for the territory as opposed to the territory and the city. They are virtually the state or territory level of expenditures. If you look at cash expenditure versus operating expenditure and cash revenues versus operating revenue, you will find a very high degree of correlation, and that is quite understandable, really, because one is only an adjustment of the other.

That correlation exists in our reports, but particularly in the early years, and particularly this famous year. This independent document puts the lie to the government's claims. Given a choice between a set of back-cast accounts prepared more than a year after the event, when the government possibly was trying to find the best base year from which to commence accounting, given a choice between believing that and believing this, I know what I would believe, and I know what the reasonable man would believe. It is as well that the Grants Commission does their standardisation of accounts and assesses our funding on that basis. If they assessed it on the basis of the outrageous claims made in early years in the Carnell and Humphries era we would be getting nothing like the Commonwealth funding that we get now.

Speaking of Commonwealth funding, one has to observe that if you accept that that first year's claim might be an ill-based claim, then Commonwealth funding accounts for pretty well the quantum of improvement in our financial position from 1996 through to now. So there is no economic miracle, and the inclusion in budget papers about blood, sweat, tears and ticker is so much of that PR hyperbole that we have come to expect and to sneer at that has arisen from this government.

One thing that strikes me about this budget is the fact that despite the spin and the tags to previous budgets, like clever and caring capital, it appears that the government has only now recognised, in an election year, the great need in the community for basic and essential services. They have only now realised that there is poverty in Canberra. They have only now realised that getting kids to school costs money. They have only now realised that there are things you can do to alleviate many of the social problems that exist and have become worse over the previous five years of this government's term in office.

The government will claim that they were concentrating on getting the budget in balance, getting the fundamentals right, and now that things are in order they can focus on social need. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I don't buy that. In fact, I reject it entirely. Wasn't

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