Page 2819 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 August 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
for 2004-05 at $2.189 million. However, budget paper No 3 for 2004-05, the same year, shows a budgeted operating result of $8 million. The difference of $6 million appears to be due to differences in budgeted expenses.
I appreciate, of course, that budgets are revised and updated as time goes by, but the starting point for an annual budget should remain fixed. Can you explain why there is a difference of $6 million between the 2004-05 budgeted operating result in budget paper No 3 and what purports to be the same budgeted operating result in the table on page 6 of the June quarterly management report?
MR QUINLAN: I am sure I can, and I will.
Mr Mulcahy: Would you care to?
MR QUINLAN: Not at the moment, no. I will just check the numbers. If we are going to fiddle around at the margin with those numbers, I will confess to this Assembly that I have not memorised every number in our budget and I do not intend to start now. If there is some discrepancy in figures, then we will have a cool look at it and reconcile those numbers for you.
MR MULCAHY: I am happy to give you the numbers, if you wish. My supplementary question is: can the Assembly be sure that the rest of the June quarterly management report is accurate and does not contain what appear to be errors like this one?
MR QUINLAN: I guess you would have to say that nobody on either side of this house could say, when you have a bundle of figures that thick, that there is not the possibility of an error. But let me say that in my time in this Assembly and in my time working directly with our Treasury, I have a very high degree of confidence in them and a great respect for the work that they have done. I am sure that, politics aside, the rest of the house would share that respect for the work that they do.
Water—Googong catchment
MRS DUNNE: My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Minister, yesterday in question time you spoke about the poor rainfall in the Googong catchment and how the latest policy of Actew was to use the Googong Dam, effectively, as a holding tank and you spoke about the capacity to pump 150 megalitres of water a day from the Cotter catchment to the Googong catchment. If, as you say—and all the current evidence supports it—the Googong Dam is so unproductive, why does your water resources management plan, called “Think water, act water”, state that the resource of the combined Googong catchments is 40 per cent higher than it was in the original, 1998, water resources management plan? How do you account for the 40 per cent increase on paper of the resource when the Googong is so obviously underperforming?
MR STANHOPE: As I did indicate yesterday, the Googong catchment is not performing nearly as well as the Cotter catchment. That is a result of a number of factors: firstly, the amount or level of rain that is falling and, secondly, though it has not been categorically or scientifically determined, some significant concerns about a lack of performance within the Googong catchment as a result of urban or rural residential development within the catchment. The catchment is managed by New South Wales and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .