Page 140 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2006
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$108.9 million, $120 million and $131.8 million, leaving, of course, a GFS net operating balance, adjusted for land sales revenue and superannuation—
Mr Pratt: You’ve proved you can read. Tell us what it means.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Pratt, the Treasurer has explained in detail why it is appropriate in the ACT that we, and any other government within the ACT, would have adjusted, and would have insisted on adjusting, for land sales revenue and superannuation revenue, which produces a bottom line GFS net operating balance, as so adjusted—and appropriately adjusted. It is accepted by everybody—by Standard & Poor’s, by Moody’s, by our rating agencies—as appropriate that we would adjust in this way, and you achieve a bottom line that moves from a high of $148 million to a low of $6 million in 2008-09. In fact, the GFS net operating balance, as adjusted for land sales and superannuation, produces in that configuration a better outyear result than the Australian accounting bottom line. It actually reduces to 6.6 as against 16, so there are ups and downs, ins and outs, in relation to any system that we might use.
The GFS, as appropriately adjusted for land sales revenue and for superannuation revenue, in the initial or forward years produces a slightly worse result, but only slightly worse, but in the outyears it produces a better result. This enormous interest that the shadow Treasurer exhibits now in the GFS is something that I am sure he will embrace when it brings us earlier into a surplus than if we maintained, for instance, the Australian accounting standard as the basis on which we will budget into the future.
So you are quite right, Mr Pratt, on the raw figures, not adjusted. And no government would utilise GFS without adjustment. No government, of this persuasion or your persuasion or of the Greens’ persuasion—no government in this place, whether it be you or us—would utilise GFS without adjusting for land sales revenue or superannuation revenue, because it would be a nonsense. So you can talk about GFS until the cows come home, because the figures in this year are more dramatic. You want to play this pea and thimble trick, this smoke and mirrors trick, on the electorate by saying that all of a sudden we no longer utilise the Australian accounting standard.
In 17 years of self-government, we have never stood in this place and debated our books against GFS. Magically, from last year to this year, all of a sudden the debate is now not around the Australian accounting standard; it is now around the GFS. Why is that? Why is it that the shadow Treasurer is so determined to now debate the ACT’s books on the basis of GFS? It is because the figures are more dramatic if one distorts them.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired.
MR PRATT: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, now that the ACT is up there with New South Wales as the highest taxing jurisdiction in Australia, can Canberra citizens expect super taxes, charges and fees to pay off the government’s debt, GFS or otherwise?
MR STANHOPE: I think what Mr Pratt is asking, if I might paraphrase the question, is: will we be putting up any rates and taxes? Is that the question?
Mr Pratt: Yes, to pay for your debt.
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