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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1244 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Here is an opposition which, when in government, when I first came into this place, was manic about selling off Actew. "We have to sell off Actew because we are heading towards a billion dollar unfunded superannuation liability." Was that of concern then, or was that the mask for the ideologically driven desire to privatise for its own sake?

Mr Humphries: We did sell off Actew.

MR QUINLAN: You sold half of it-you sold all the control. On one hand, there was the Humphries hypocrisy. I was going to say he was standing beside Mrs Carnell, but nobody stood beside Mrs Carnell. He was standing a little behind her, backing her up in wanting to flog off Actew because we had a superannuation liability. Now, because it suits, we are grasping at a different set of accounts, a different methodology, which ignores that problem because it paints a better picture for the day. We have adopted Australian accounting standards-AAS 31. That is how we prepare our budgets, and that is how this was prepared. That is how we will prepare the end of year statements-like with like.

No, Mr Humphries. Access is not wrong, but Access is only right to the extent that they have evaluated the position on the basis of GFS. Are you recommending that we go back to that system? I think not-because that system does not adequately provide for the future, and it allows a current government to build an almost unmanageable legacy for future generations and future governments. Access, even with their October figures, did observe that the government had loosened the purse strings, and it says it was going to make consistent all but small deficits. So they say you were in deficit, Mr Humphries.

There is a need for some maturity in how we look at the ACT's finances. Against our growing liability, we need to accrue those liabilities that will turn into cash commitments at a future time. We also need to look at our cash bottom line. I recommend that every member of this Assembly look at Mr Humphries' last budget and the cash bottom line. It is not a pretty sight. If you, as Treasury has done for us, calculate the projection of total unencumbered cash-that cash which is available to spend after you have made adequate provision for liabilities-for those expenses already incurred but not yet paid, that line puts this territory still in steep decline. This territory is yet to be in a robust financial position.

I turn to Mr Blessington. We have clarified that he was not representing KPMG when he did this particular exercise. However, he does seem to have said, "We will take most of the goodies and represent the position of the territory and its performance over a year using these figures. We will even pick up $12 million which is from a previous year. Yes, we will have that because that represents a good job being done this year." Nonsense. It is not indicative. "But we do want to leave out superannuation."

Why do we want to leave out superannuation? For the single reason that a different method was adopted. How different? Different in that we took it on a different day. That is not a different method, it is just taking stock at the end of a period. In fact, it was taking stock at the end of a government.

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