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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4387 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Premiers Conference, and so on. We did not agree with that. I just cannot understand why the Labor Party are now bringing forward an amendment that will be absolutely at odds with their position earlier and, I think, at odds with what the Estimates Committee said about ACT budgets.

I think that what we are seeing here is amendments on the run, and people not having thought through what they are talking about here. It actually achieves nothing in the short term. We are talking now about 1999. Surely it would be more appropriate, taking into account that amendments are being written on the floor about something that Mr Berry would like to happen in June or July 1999, to take a deep breath on this one and put it off until we have all had a little more time to think about it.

MR WHITECROSS (11.01): Mrs Carnell's memory is fading. Perhaps the late hour has got to her. I think her recollection of the criticisms of the timing of her budget this year is faulty, as she has made some errors there. The criticism of the timing of Mrs Carnell's budget this year fell into two parts, neither of which is affected by the amendment that Mr Berry is proposing.

The first of those criticisms was that the Chief Minister chose to bring down her budget one week before the Federal budget - not three months before or four months before, but one week before. She knew when the Federal budget was to come down and she chose to bring her budget down one week before. So, her budget was brought down outside the context of decisions being made about the Federal budget. Labor's argument at the time was that it was more appropriate to bring down the ACT budget after the Federal budget, to ensure that it could appropriately respond to whatever was in the Federal budget. We know how bad Federal Liberal budgets have been for Canberra recently. We thought that a responsible ACT government, as opposed to one that supported the Federal Liberal budget, as Mrs Carnell did, would have wanted to be in a position to respond to any adverse consequences brought about by the Federal Liberal Government.

The second part of the criticism was that the Chief Minister and some other members of this place insisted on passing the budget by 30 June. Labor's view, and I think the view that was expressed in the Estimates Committee report, was that there was no imperative to pass the budget by 30 June, that a later date would have been a reasonable date for passing the budget. Indeed, that is perfectly consistent with the position advanced by Ms Follett when she was the shadow Treasurer, by me when I was the shadow Treasurer and by Mr Berry, that the budget should be brought down by the end of the financial year, not that it should be passed by the end of the financial year.

Mrs Carnell's recollection of the previous debate about the timing of budgets is incorrect. Those criticisms related to her decision to bring her budget down one week before the Federal budget and her decision to insist on trying to get the budget passed by 30 June, rather than allowing a longer period for scrutiny, which would have been possible if the arbitrary date of 30 June had not been selected for passage. That was the nature of the criticisms that were advanced. Neither of those criticisms goes to the guts of Mr Berry's amendment, which is to ensure that the budget is brought down in the Assembly before the end of the financial year.

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