Page 1836 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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MR STANHOPE: Read my own budget papers! I suggest to you, Mr Mulcahy, for the sake of saving yourself from an embarrassment which you will feel, that you try to develop some understanding of the accounting treatments that have been used in respective budgets over the last five or six years in relation to these matters.
Mr Mulcahy: I am very well aware. Why did Standard and Poor’s tell you to change it?
MR STANHOPE: If you are well aware, you would not be making the mistakes that you are making in the claims you make about differentials in relation to surpluses or deficits produced or not produced in respective budgets over the last five or six years under the GFS accounting standard, because you are, quite bluntly, wrong. You have not taken account of the variation and change in the accounting standards since 2002-03, at a time when the ABS willingly accepted and included in those budgets reference to superannuation receipts. It then changed the accounting standard to that which is incorporated in the current budget, which you have sought to denigrate. It is also quite consistent with the standards utilised and recognised in relation to the treatment of superannuation receipts in every other jurisdiction is Australia.
You are off the mark; you are off the beam; you have not understood the accounting treatment that has been utilised and accepted—
Mr Mulcahy: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I am loving this debate, and I am happy to have it, but I would like to know whether the Chief Minister can answer the question about wage price indexation. If he does not understand it—
MR SPEAKER: Order! There will be no debate about the matter. You have raised your point of order. The Chief Minister has two minutes to continue responding.
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I know it is inappropriate for me to respond to the interjection in relation to Standard and Poor’s, but the record needs to be corrected. The position quoted by the shadow Treasurer as early as this morning in relation to Standard and Poor’s ignores the statement released by Standard and Poor’s yesterday. It was quite convenient for Mr Mulcahy to quote selectively from a Standard and Poor’s report delivered some time earlier this year or last year and then conveniently ignore the statement made by Standard and Poor’s yesterday—
Mr Mulcahy: Read it thoroughly.
MR STANHOPE: We know what it says, Mr Mulcahy; we know precisely and exactly what Standard and Poor’s were saying in the statement that they released yesterday. It was as close as a rating agency ever gets to congratulating a government for the tough decisions it has taken. And you know that. Well done, Standard and Poor’s. The criticism they make is that the budget was not nearly tough enough. That is the criticism of the ratings agency in relation to the budget delivered yesterday. It is an acknowledgment by Standard and Poor’s that the government had taken decisions that were required to be taken so that the AAA rating that the ACT enjoys and has enjoyed most particularly over the last five years—for the reason, as important as others, that this government has delivered five consecutive surplus budgets, including the second highest ever delivered by a government since self-government—will continue.
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