Page 1443 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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maintaining consistency with the ABS cash-based GFS. It was the Carnell government that agreed to that in 1997. Follett said: “Let’s do it.” Carnell said: “We’re on your side. We will set ourselves a time frame.” What was the time frame? The government then decided upon a transition to accrual reporting. How did they do that? They said that it would take time because people needed to convert. When they adopted the accrual GFS to be part of the UPF, they said:
As noted above, the ABS introduced the accrual GFS framework with its release of the 1999-2000 Government Financial Estimates publication in early 2000 …
It is expected that most jurisdictions will be able to conform to the accrual UPF—
read GFS:
beginning with the 2000-01 budget cycle.
The document goes on to say that those that cannot should include in their 2000-01 budget documentation the accrual tables outlined in appendix A and B. The document continues:
Not all jurisdictions will be in a position to meet the accrual reporting requirements of the revised UPF—
read GFS:
in their 2000-01 budgets. Such jurisdictions have until 2002-03 budget year to fully implement reporting on the accrual UPF basis, and are expected to continue reporting on a cash UPF basis in the interim.
Whose budget was the 2002-03 budget? It was a Stanhope budget. Yet again they have not met their commitments. Yet again they are hiding the truth about the budget. Successive governments, firstly Labor, then Liberal, then Labor, committed to doing this. Who has not done it? Jon Stanhope. So let us have no more pious comments from Mr Corbell seeking to put a spin on the debate. This is a good motion. Both sides should debate it rationally. Unfortunately, the Labor Party does not want to do that.
Mr Stanhope’s amendment notes that the government have delivered four straight budget surpluses. If so, it just compounds the ineptitude and the economic mismanagement of the Stanhope government. How do we know this? It is because they have actually had four surplus budgets. In those four surplus budgets they received $705 million revenue above estimates and had accrued cash surpluses of about $250 million.
So after four surpluses, riding, I have to say, on the back of the reforms of the former Liberal government and the surplus and cash that we left them, what have they done with the surpluses of those four years? The sun is shining and the hay is growing. What have they done with the hay? They have squandered it, eaten it, lost it; they have sent it away. Now we are faced with the prospect of four deficits. It is feast and then famine. It is almost biblical. We have gone from four surpluses to four deficits, estimated to be $37 million, $108 million, $57 million and $16 million.
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