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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1040 ..

MR HIRD: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for that answer, and ask: Did Mr Quinlan make similar mistakes in referring to the amount contained in the draft budget for increased health funding?

MR HUMPHRIES: Unfortunately, Mr Quinlan has made further mistakes in respect of his accounting for the treatment of health in the draft budget. Some time ago, Mr Quinlan issued a document entitled "A draft response to the draft budget". He proudly put it out a few days after the draft budget was tabled in May. In that document he made an $8m error. In his statement, under the heading "Health and community care", he commented as follows:

He has said that that amounts to $852,000. Mr Quinlan has taken two separate injections the Government has made into the budget - an injection for price inflation and another injection - and he has described one as being subtracted from the other. Rather than adding the two together, rather than pressing the plus button on the calculator, he has pressed the minus button on the calculator. Mr Speaker, it really is hard to understand that mistake being made, because the draft budget papers explain how that sort of figure was got to. The budget papers explain that the 2000-01 government payment for outputs figure is an increase on the latest estimated result for the end of this year of $7.092m, an increase. Mr Quinlan has characterised an increase of $7.092m as an increase of just $852,000 - a pretty big mistake, I would have thought. Mr Quinlan's comment shows that he had simply deducted for no apparent reason the positive price indexation figure from the new growth needs funding figure. That is either incompetence or just plain laziness; I do not know which it is. He ignored the total value shown in the operating statement, leaving him $8m in error in his response.

Mr Speaker, I think it is worth quoting a few sections from Mr Quinlan's press release on the draft budget and then quoting a few paragraphs from the report of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. Let me read the first of them, page 5 of Mr Quinlan's January statement about health and community care:

Let me read now a similar paragraph in the report of the standing committee:

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