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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1827 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (4.33), in reply: In closing the debate, I will run over a few of the points that have been made. I was very grateful to hear some members who spoke in this debate-pitifully few I have to say-acknowledge that it has been a pretty significant achievement for the ACT, and the ACT government in particular, to have finally broken out of an operating loss situation.

Obviously today we are in a financial year where we expect to come in still at a loss-it will be a small loss but still at a loss-and during next year hopefully we will all still be here and we will be in surplus. Let us hope that nobody in the Australian Capital Territory is ever visited again with a loss of the kind that has been referred to. The legacy we are handing on to our children is one of surplus budgets and reasonable prospects of the territory being able to manage to do the things it needs to do for its citizens without having to borrow excessively, without having to run up debt. Breaking through that barrier into surplus, into the black, is pretty significant and I thank those members who chose to acknowledge it.

Mr Stanhope described the budget as an attempt to reinvent Ms Carnell. I would have thought giving the Treasury away to me and so on was not much of a reinvention.

Mr Quinlan: Why did you do it then?

MR HUMPHRIES: Because it was not about reinventing Mrs Carnell-that is why we did it.

Mr Quinlan: What was it about?

MR HUMPHRIES: It was about making sure that it was possible to deal with the important issues with a fresh face, a fresh pair of hands and a fresh mind. I would have to say I have been able to deliver a surplus budget only on the back of the hard work of my predecessor, Kate Carnell.

I note how often the Labor Party refers to Kate Carnell's charisma, how often they refer to her photogenic qualities and how often they refer to the fact that she is always out there in the media and always taking media opportunities. I have to say that it sounds to me a lot like jealousy. It sounds a lot like six people, who have not got as much charisma between them as Kate Carnell has got in her little finger, wanting to put down this woman who constantly does them in in the media stakes.

There have been a whole range of lines in the media about this budget, both in the draft budget process and the final budget process, and one by one each of them has fallen over. Each one has gone flat, evaporated or collapsed after just a matter of days. It was claimed that the final budget would be completely transformed by the GST and that the draft budget was completely nonsensical and without any substance because we did not know the final effect of the GST. Mr Quinlan now knows very well that the final budget has not changed as a result of the GST, except to the extent of a couple of fairly marginal decisions the government has made about how the GST will be carried on to certain community organisations. With that and a couple of other very small exceptions, this budget is the same in structure as the one that was presented in draft form in January.

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