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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2069 ..

MR QUINLAN: I am not talking about the Auditor-General; I am talking about you guys. The Auditor-General never said 1995-96 was a year of Labor government.

Mr Moore: No, but he said that it was $344 million.

MR QUINLAN: The point I am making is that that year was a year of the Carnell government.

Mr Moore: So?

MR QUINLAN: You keep insisting that it was a Labor year and I am saying that that is not true. I am not allowed to call that a lie; I have to say that it is incorrect. But if you do it constantly, I leave the bottom line open to you. The simple fact is that the Carnell government was elected in February 1995. In 1997, which was an interesting year, let me tell you-

Mr Corbell: Lots of interesting things happened.

MR QUINLAN: There was a lot happening in 1997.

Mr Corbell: I think Hall/Kinlyside happened in 1997.

MR QUINLAN: Yes, around about that. In 1997 the government received cabinet submissions on the Bruce Stadium with a financial plan which had, they claimed, been subject to rigorous testing by Arthur Andersen and the International Management Group and relied on it. That was a 1997 job. We all know now that that financial plan was so fanciful that it was obvious at first glance that the figures were incorrect. In fact, there is an apocryphal story about its being dismissed out of hand by one particular recipient with an apparently suitable comment applied to it. That was an era in which figures were misused.

In 1997 it was decided that the government would backcast its accounting to 1995-96. I have spoken to the Auditor-General about this matter formally and informally. Apparently, there is not a lot of documentation to go with it. I have sent a letter and asked for the file and it has been pretty slow coming-surprise, surprise. But it was a year of the Carnell government. I would not accuse Mrs Carnell of making a loss of $344 million because she did not, actually. That figure has been inflated by an abnormal item of $91 million. That would be the actual result for the year if the backcast figures were right. It should be remembered that they have been done looking backwards. The result was, at worst, a $253 million operating loss. The $91 million was an accident.

If you actually accounted for this year in the same way as you accounted for 1995-96, you could explain away $113 million of the difference between this year and 1995-96 like that. It is just accounting. It has nothing to do with money, performance or expenditure; it is just accounting, but the government still uses it. Surprisingly, after this big year, after the black hole was found or built, depending on how cynical you might be, the next year the operating loss was only $100 million. Of course, having started to fiddle with accounting, the tangled web you weaved, the next year you could not sustain it at $100 million.

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