Page 1566 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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position—the operating performance of the territory net of the results of invested superannuation cash reserves.
What is intriguing about this is that—as the shadow treasurer stood there and gave this information to the community about the position net of superannuation reserves—Mr Stefaniak, who is delivering the alternative budget, did not have a clue that that was what he was doing. Mr Stefaniak asked the question today—a question one assumes would have been written by the shadow treasurer because it relates to the budget.
Perhaps Mr Mulcahy did not let Mr Stefaniak know that what he has been doing for the last two days, in quoting the GFS net operating balance, has been in fact and precisely what Mr Stefaniak has just asked: why are you not doing that? Do we not need to ask: why is it that Mr Mulcahy actually let Mr Stefaniak make such a goose of himself in asking this question today?
MR STEFANIAK: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I refer the Chief Minister to his own fact sheet No 10, and my supplementary is: why have you abandoned your predecessor’s commitment to show the operating performance net of invested superannuation cash reserves in your budget and financial reports when you said you would ensure that budgets and financial reports clearly showed the operating performance of the territory net of the results of invested superannuation cash reserves?
MR STANHOPE: I must say that one thing I admire about Mr Stefaniak—it is admirable, but I do not know whether I admire it about him—is that he is such a sucker for punishment. I have just answered the question. I have just answered it quite clearly and I would have thought quite unambiguously that the charter of financial integrity, just referred to and the basis of this question, provides that Labor will ensure that budgets and financial reports clearly show in some form the operating performance of the territory net of the results of invested superannuation cash reserves.
On page 8 of the budget papers there is some explanation for why we present the budget papers in the form we do, and indeed we provide an explanation against three different standards: against the Australian accounting standard, which is there in the budget papers; against a net operating balance position in relation to GFS, which is there in the budget papers; and against pure GFS, which is there in the budget papers. Pure GFS, of course, incorporates the operating performance of the territory net of the results of invested superannuation. Why do we do that? We even explain why we do it that way. We explain why it is that we meet the commitment we made in that charter of financial integrity. It is explained in these terms:
In order to ensure that the ACT’s Budget is measured on a consistent basis with state governments, it is necessary to adjust the GFS net operating balance reported in the UPF statements in Appendix F, for expected capital gains on its superannuation investments.
The budget papers go on to explain:
It should be emphasised that this adjustment is not simply required to ensure consistency with the GFS results reported by state jurisdictions, it is also
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