Page 2864 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 22 November 1989
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APPROPRIATION BILL 1989-90
Debate resumed.
MR MOORE: As I was saying, it seems to me that a sum of $91m is a rather excessive amount for us to be spending in terms of debt servicing because it is money that, as far as I am concerned, has us going backwards. It is the problem that we see in Third World countries, in the banana republics. I accept that some debt servicing may be necessary, but it is of great concern to me that it is such an extreme amount.
MR COLLAERY (4.31): Mr Speaker, this issue has been debated on occasion. I share Mr Moore's concerns about our borrowing levels. We have seen the position the States got into, and of course the States are now selling off their silver. The sales of government assets, the sales of statutory authorities, are rated by the International Monetary Fund and the OECD as negative aspects of a budget. They are rated as forms of deficit financing and they go on the minus side of the slate. They do not really balance a budget. They are really part of borrowings.
There are two items of that nature in the program for the so-called "dividends" paid by the ACT Electricity and Water authority of $5m and the Gaming and Liquor Authority of $2m. Those dividends - which is a euphemism for getting a phone call from the Treasury or the under treasurer to pay up - are really enforced payments. There is a statutory provision for payments by ACTEW and GALA, but some aspects of that require further examination and elucidation.
These are book entry dividends because they add nothing net to the worth of the capital assets of the Territory. They are, in effect, changed over into the broad budget, as I call it, to help balance the books. We are interested to know, and will be pressing it in the short term, how the audited accounts of GALA are going and just exactly how that whole process is working. We are interested in the separate ACTEW budget and the separate commissioner for housing budget.
Mrs Grassby: It is a statutory body.
MR COLLAERY: One should recall that there are very large sums of money being dealt with outside of this elected budget, the budget that the electors of this Capital Territory look at.
Mrs Grassby: It is a statutory body.
MR COLLAERY: There is a chatterbox that says to me constantly that it is a statutory authority. That is the very issue that I am addressing, Minister. The fact is that the question of statutory authorities was addressed by the Estimates Committee in recommendation 4, and that was to bring at least some of them into the general departmental response.
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