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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1656 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
figure; I do not know if it is true or not-perhaps the Auditor-General does not believe that abnormal items are actually all that unusual. In fact, I cannot recall any budget that has not been brought down without at least a small number of abnormal items in it. In fact, quite often there are a large number of abnormal items. So, if you can have a budget without abnormal items you are doing extremely well. Perhaps Mr Quinlan is promising that when he is the Treasurer-many moons away perhaps-he will deliver budgets without abnormal items.
Whatever the case, whether the budget should or should not have included the abnormal items, the fact is that even if there was not legitimately the inclusion of an abnormal item in a particular year, you have still got a loss for that year of $256 million-a quarter of a billion dollars in loss inherited from the Australian Labor Party by this government in its first full year of operation. A quarter of a billion dollars! That is still nothing about which I, as Treasurer and the inheritor of previous Labor Treasurers' budgets, or Mr Quinlan, as shadow Treasurer, should be proud.
The real figure is not $256 million. It is, in fact, $344 million, $347 million or $349 million. I do not mind which you choose. Choose one of the three figures, but any one of those is the case because of what the Auditor-General himself has had to say about this. On page 3 of the report-
Mr Quinlan: This is not a little chat, is it?
MR HUMPHRIES: Not a little chat, no. This is what is published in the Auditor-General's printed report 1995-96 Territory Operating Loss. The report stated:
The 1995-96 loss eventually will have to be met by future generations of ACT taxpayers;
The 1995-96 operating loss of $349m-
that is the figure he uses-
is equivalent to around $3,000 per ACT household or $1,100 for each man, woman and child resident;
The 1996-97 budgeted loss is $231m; this is the equivalent of more than $2,000 per ACT household or $750 for each resident;
That, of course, was the loss that my predecessor, Mrs Carnell, managed to bring in after the previous much higher loss under Labor. I quote again the Auditor-General:
The budget forward estimates forecast large losses continuing through to the limit of the forecasts (year 2000);
That was an interesting forecast, wasn't it? The Auditor-General continues:
These losses will increase the amounts to be met by future generations of taxpayers; and
The size of the losses are sufficient to create the potential for the future standard of living of ACT residents to be significantly affected.
Mr Park
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