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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1475 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Stanhope has claimed that Labor has announced many of the initiatives in this budget already and that the government is now playing catch-up. He cited, for example, the comments made by Mr Wood just last week in his announcement about poverty. He says this is proof that the government is catching up to what Labor is saying.

I am sure Mr Wood could explain to Mr Stanhope that you do not put the budget for any particular year together in the last seven or eight days before it is delivered. In fact, any government usually has the budget more or less put to bed and entirely immutable by about seven or eight days before it is delivered. So how we had the prescience to enter Mr Wood's mind and work out what he was going to say before he said it and put it in our budget is a matter that I would like to hear about.

Mr Speaker, we are told that we are using optimistic growth forecasts. Mr Quinlan, I think it was, or Mr Stanhope, supported that claim by saying that I had conceded that at the budget breakfast yesterday. Well, that is rubbish. I said nothing of the sort and I repudiate that suggestion. Our growth forecasts are not optimistic. I was asked to say what we might do if they prove not to be optimistic, and I gave some comment on that. To make such comment should not be read as saying that I am in any way conceding that there would be a failure of our growth forecasts, and I repeat that I think those forecasts are sound and will be sustained over this coming financial year.

The issue that Labor is raising here, of our forecast being too optimistic in their view, poses a significant problem for them which they may not have twigged to at this stage, but I will assist them by telling them what it is. If they believe that our surpluses over the next three or four years are not sustainable, Mr Speaker, they clearly cannot, in all conscience, go into this coming election campaign and promise to spend a cent of those surpluses if they do not think they are sustainable.

Mr Moore: In fact they had better explain how they are going to deal with the unsustainable surplus.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed; as Mr Moore suggests, they are going to have to explain how they put money back into the system to provide surpluses of the order that they would like to support. If they think our $10 million minimum surplus is not adequate, or it is adequate but they do not think we are going to get to $10 million, they will have to explain how they get there.

Mr Moore: Increase registration. An insurance levy.

MR HUMPHRIES: So they will have to reverse some of the decisions that we have made. I will give you a few suggestions for you to take back to your party room and to your caucus and talk about. You could reinstate the registration cut we have just made. You could whack Floriade fees back on. You could do what you have already done in your own period in office; you could cut education spending. You could do all those things, but, whatever you do do, you need to tell the community about, first of all, and, secondly, you need to explain how you are going to spend so much money in the course of the next few years. You made a number of promises in your speeches today, uncosted of course, about how you are going to spend all that money, and yet save enough money to save the bottom line of the budget and the out years of the budget.

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