Page 2581 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
While there is a significant buffer before an AAA credit rating may be threatened, there are also considerable risks to the net position of the ACT Government which are associated with unfunded superannuation liabilities.
That is a fair analysis. That points to the fact that there are risks in the budgeting process, there are risks to the ACT over the coming years, but it is far from the budget full of deficit and deceit that Mr Smyth’s motion and the Liberal Party press releases refer to.
For want of it being suggested that I am selectively quoting from this document, I acknowledge quite openly there are bits in here where there are red flags, where the report says the government needs to be aware of these things, these areas of risk. And that is what I would expect that sort of report to do. But it is a very different story to that being put forward by the Liberal Party.
Unfortunately Mr Smyth undermined his own argument when he stood up this morning and tried to run this line about the estimates committee providing a bipartisan report. It is simply not the case. To even suggest so is actually embarrassing. It is quite clear, with the committee structure we have—two Labor members, two Liberal members—we have two different reports.
One might reflect on the quality of each of those reports. I think that the outcome is perhaps not ideal. To suggest the Labor Party members could have stopped the report, which is what Mr Smyth did, actually fails to recognise the willingness of those Labor Party members to try to get an outcome from the committee. It is quite clear what the outcome was. It was stated here in the chamber yesterday. The report was brought forward. Two Liberal members voted for it—this is Mr Hanson’s report as the chair—Dr Bourke voted against it, which was what we were told in the Assembly yesterday, and Mr Gentleman abstained.
That was not because Mr Gentleman agreed with all of the recommendations. He stated very clearly here in the chamber yesterday that it was to enable a report to come out. That is transparency. That is actually making an effort to get something done in recognition of the fact that that is the way the numbers are balanced in this chamber.
So to come in here and try to turn that into “tacit support” of the assertions that Mr Hanson and his Liberal Party colleague on the committee have come up with is simply embarrassing. Again Mr Smyth has chirped up, saying, “They could have stopped it.” They could have stopped it. But to the contrary, what Mr Gentleman’s action did was allow Mr Hanson and his colleague to put their views on the table. And if they had blocked it, we know what would be going on here. They would be coming in here merry hell saying, “The committee system does not work. It cannot possibly work with having two and two,” and we are going to come back to that debate tomorrow.
Mr Smyth is having one each way here, but I think simply trying to suggest that there is a bipartisan view that the budget should not proceed is the sort of distortion of the facts that does Mr Smyth no favours.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video