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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2251 ..

Now, given that we have a 2.5 per cent CPI, in real terms the expenditure for this budget will be lower than the expenditure that is attributable to the Humphries budget of last year.

Mr Humphries: It's $116 million worth of initiatives, on your figures.

MR QUINLAN: Now, okay, to be fair, there are always some accounting puts and takes, and I guess that brings me to the point: you take those raw figures, as Mr Humphries has done, and say, "A high spending government. They have $116 million and we only had $90 million or $60 million or whatever." What a huge difference-must be 0.1 per cent or something, is it? But yet somehow this is a high spending government! In fact, Mr Humphries you should be aware that we have also made savings.

Now, I am prepared to accept that Mr Humphries stands in this place and he is often confused, to be kind. He is confused about the $344 million-which government brought that to the people of the ACT. He has been confused about that for years. So he is a little confused and a slow learner.

MR HARGREAVES: My supplementary question to the Treasurer is: can he please advise the Assembly of some of the cost pressures faced by this government in framing the budget?

MR QUINLAN: Thank you again, Mr Hargreaves. I think it is very important that we recognise that in putting this budget together-in putting together, might I say, an honest budget-it is necessary to include all of those expected expenditures and commitments. But what we have is: they were gunna fix them. Even at this morning's budget breakfast, I think we had this from Mr Smyth, defending some of the issues that we thought we inherited. They were gunna fix it. They were gunna fund the medical school-signed an MOU, did the media, did the photo op, but we were just gunna put the money in a bit later.

Mr Smyth told us this morning he was gunna fix the remand centre. He was gunna fix that. Well, they were gunna-they were going to fund the nurses pay increase, but it wasn't in the budget. In fact, probably the most manipulative element of the previous government's budget was the fact that they made offers and knew there was a level of increase that was inevitable. But no, to make it look good they just simply left it out.

And, when I did my objective analysis of the appropriation bills, I put that one down to you, Gunna.

The Liberals knew that it was necessary for more money for the AFP EBA. They were gunna put that in as well. And we hear that they were responsible for initiating the ICT Centre of Excellence-and they were gunna fund that too. Well, we have funded that. And yet somehow, when you pick up on these things that that lot were gunna do, you're a big spending government! How about that?

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