Page 3038 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Mrs Burke was therefore suspended at 3.02 pm for three sitting hours in accordance with standing order 204, and she accordingly withdrew from the chamber.
MR SPEAKER: Ms MacDonald, do you have a supplementary question?
MS MacDONALD: Yes, please, Mr Speaker. My supplementary question is: Treasurer, can you advise the Assembly on the government’s approach to budgeting in maintaining the territory’s financial position in the future?
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, the government’s approach to budgeting is based on a disciplined, focused approach that has regard to both short and long-term objectivities. It is also based on some integrity, not like the position we see from the shadow Treasurer in relation to pure GFS as against AAS, depending on what you are doing.
It is quite interesting to refer to the budgeted surpluses that are incorporated within our budget papers. As I said before, they reveal an operating balance of around $52 million under GFS, as adjusted appropriately, for 2008-09 and a surplus of $64 million under GFS, as adjusted appropriately, for 2009-10. Of course, this is the system that the shadow Treasurer refuses to accept as legitimate, until, of course, he decides he needs to spend or cut revenue.
It is interesting to go back and actually have revealed starkly in Hansard and in Mr Mulcahy’s press releases his humbug and his hypocrisy on this issue of GFS accounting and the surplus. With the promises which the Liberals have announced in the last week amounting to $54 million for 100 immediate acute care beds, revenue cuts of $16 million in relation to the abolition of the utilities tax and the $22 million now in the grey area as Mr Mulcahy repudiates a promise made by Mr Pratt, we would, on Mr Mulcahy’s accepted pure GFS accounting standard, be plunged into an enormous deficit.
So what is it now? Now that Mr Mulcahy is involved in making his first expenditure promise—$54 million straight up on beds and a revenue cut of $16 million—if we just take those two that you have actually owned up to, the $54 million on beds and the $16 million on utilities, totalling $70 million, and ignore the $22 million for the fire levy, which Mr Pratt accepts and Mr Mulcahy does not so let us ignore it for the point of this argument and go to $70 million, Mr Mulcahy is out there.
Go to Mr Mulcahy’s press release of June 2006 in which he poured scorn on the surplus delivered through the budget. “The ACT today,” Mr Mulcahy says, “accused the government of reverting to an abandoned account presentation format.” He goes on to say, “The reported surplus of $176 million is achieved by relying on a system that was abandoned by the territory government.” “The GFS deficit,” Mr Mulcahy goes on to say, “is actually minus $123 million, or minus $92 million if one wants to take into account long-term gains on superannuation investments.”
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