Page 1572 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 31 March 2009
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MR HANSON: Mr Speaker, my supplementary is: has there been any downgrading of the security specifications at the AMC in order to rush the commissioning?
MR HARGREAVES: No.
Budget—outcome
MR SMYTH: My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, in evidence to the public accounts committee on 4 March this year, you were not able to provide an updated figure on the budget outcome for the current financial year. Indeed, you relied on the then revised outcome that you had released before Christmas, more than two months before the committee hearings. Treasurer, why are you unable to provide an update on the budget outcome for 2008-09 to the committee?
MS GALLAGHER: As Mr Smyth knows, the revised budget outcome is reported on twice a year, once in the midyear review and once in the budget, and that has always been the way of things in this place, and always will be.
Mr Smyth: No, that’s not true.
MS GALLAGHER: It is true, and I will check the comments you have made, Mr Smyth. It is true. The question that Mr Smyth goes to is the monthly updates that were provided at some point in time. The only time those monthly updates included the revised operating result was the month following the publication of the midyear review and budget, and we do that in our quarterly reports.
I think Mr Smyth, as usual, is twisting the truth here. We have not changed the way in which we provide updates to the Assembly and to the community. I would also say that we have been very up-front since our re-election in reporting to the community and to the Assembly about the major impacts on our bottom line regarding revised results from the commonwealth in terms of interest rate reductions. We have been pretty up-front, Mr Smyth, on what those impacts are, and the dollar figure.
I do not see the use in providing a day-by-day running account of the territory’s operating result. As you know, Mr Smyth, it is extremely complex. It is dependent on a range of factors, including decisions that the government is taking in the budget. In terms of our own revenue and reviews of our own revenue, you know that that situation changes, and we will be providing, in accordance with our legal obligations, the update of the territory’s bottom line in the budget, as every government has done, including a Liberal government. That information will be provided in five weeks time, Mr Smyth, and you will just have to suck it and see. Wait and see in five weeks time.
Mr Smyth: We used to table it monthly.
MS GALLAGHER: You tabled the quarterly reports monthly, Mr Smyth. You did not table the revised operating result. That is what you are trying to peddle out there, and it is not true. It is not correct. So the quarterly reports are tabled, the midyear review is tabled, and the budget will be tabled on 5 May. And that is when we will be able to give the community a picture of the territory’s revised operating result.
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