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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (2 February) . . Page.. 67 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Are any other solutions available? We should look and we will have to look at whether any other solutions are available because it is very clear that ACTEW is not going to be sold. What are the other solutions? I have to say that Mr Quinlan's committee has not identified any viable solution other than to borrow, put off and allow our children to deal with the issue in due time, the sort of solution that was identified by Labor governments in South Australia and Victoria, which left the decisions to later generations. I think that is something that we ought not to do.

That was the choice for those of us who were not interested in selling ACTEW but who did have a financially conservative view. I think I have always had a relatively conservative view financially; in other words, I think it is just being responsible that we make sure that we are not spending more than we earn, that we actually meet our responsibilities. If that is a financially conservative view, it is one - Mr Kaine will agree - that I have spouted from the time I was first in this Assembly. In fact, 12 months ago to the day I issued a press release in the context of an election and challenged the leaders of the Labor, Liberal and Greens parties and Independent Paul Osborne to a debate on the ACT's continuing operating loss. I said:

How candidates respond to the deficit is one of the most basic and important issues in this campaign. No member of the Assembly can avoid their direct and collective responsibilities for our public finances. Those candidates with pretensions to form government must persuade voters and other MLAs that they have a satisfactory program.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I put out that challenge and we went into that debate at a time when I least expected to be sitting on these benches, but when I thought that financial responsibility was a particularly important issue for us to deal with, and we now have to face some hard issues. One issue is our superannuation liability. That is one we all agree with. I have heard Mr Quinlan say quite regularly that we do have to deal with our superannuation liability. Mr Osborne has raised it. I have certainly raised it. I believe it is something that we have to deal with. How are we going to do it? The Government has put up one proposal which is about to be knocked off. That is a matter of choice. Throughout his speech, we did not hear Mr Stanhope offer any other alternative. The alternative put up by Mr Quinlan would create a $40m hole in our very next budget. So, it is something that we really have to look at much more carefully, and that is a real challenge for a government. It is not a challenge on which we should spit the dummy, nor has anybody spat the dummy. We have said what has to be done, and I will come back to that.

I draw attention to the fact that a number of people have made great mileage out of this issue not being dealt with in the election campaign. Certainly, I attempted to deal with financial issues in the election campaign, and did so regularly. Certainly, there had been talks. I had discussions with members of the Labor Party, both those who are here and those who are not here at the moment, and I had talks with members of the Liberal Party about that option being out there. But why would you raise that option when there was likely to be significant misrepresentation, as indeed there was over the last few months on a number of issues, and, secondly, when you are not yet ready and you do not even know if that is going to be one of the solutions?

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