Page 2159 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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MR STANHOPE: No, it is not.
Mr Mulcahy: It is.
MR STANHOPE: No, it is not. It is a $91 million GFS from last year.
Mr Mulcahy: That is when you take into account the 7.5 per cent gains on super.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR STANHOPE: Go back to the accounting standards applied by your party in government. Go back to the accounting standards applied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in relation to budget.
MR SPEAKER: Chief Minister, direct your comments through me.
Mr Mulcahy: It is a 50-page report. You should read it.
Mr Barr: Why do your colleagues oppose every measure that actually addressed that bit?
MR SPEAKER: Order, members! That includes you, Mr Barr. The house has given the Chief Minister leave to make a statement. That means without interjection.
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will conclude. It is, of course, ironic, and it is, I suppose, part and parcel of the argy-bargy and hypocrisy of the shadow Treasurer, whose mantra is that we should not be reporting against the Australian Accounting Standards; we should be reporting only against the government finance statistics standard. That is not what he and his party did in government but it is convenient now, of course, because the result is so good.
The Australian Accounting Standards result for 2005-06 of $176 million is in the same way an outstanding result. As the shadow Treasurer bangs on about this, it needs to be said that we took the tough decision, the hard decision, in a way a decision that exposes this government and any government of the future that moves to the GFS. His party did not have the bottle to do it. It did not put the public interest first. It put the short electoral cycle first. It put the party advantage first. This is becoming the recurring theme of the Liberal Party in this place now and in the past: no bottle, no courage and no guts.
When it came to the tough decisions, they left it to another government on another day. They did not do it themselves. It is interesting that Mr Mulcahy refers back to what the Liberal Party did in government. His most recent comment was in relation to the Narrabundah caravan park. That was an appalling policy decision and outcome and was, of course, very much the work of his previous leader. I was wondering: why is Mr Mulcahy continually drawing public attention to this appalling policy outcome, which is the legacy of his previous leader, Mr Smyth? Then, of course, it dawned on me. We know why. It is basically the final cut after having undermined—
Mr Corbell: Making sure he is properly buried.
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