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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (13 June) . . Page.. 1646 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
government has addressed or treated the superannuation expense. In paragraphs 2.30 and 2.31 it says:
Combined with the $20 m of interest on Superannuation Investments that should not be counted as disposable funds, there is $42 m that cannot be committed to budget expenditure.
Different, legitimate and more open, accounting would show that this budget has an effective Operating Deficit of $30 m.
Now, putting aside for one minute the question of whether it is a surplus or a deficit-we can debate that another time-the accounting that we use in our budget is described, by implication, as being illegitimate and secretive.
The accounting that we use is accounting approved by the Auditor-General. We have no choice but to use that process, because that is what the Auditor-General says we should use to account for our documents. It is described elsewhere in this document-
Mr Quinlan: Read the next paragraph? No, no.
MR HUMPHRIES: You can read it if you want to, Mr Quinlan. It says somewhere else that this is an American accounting trick. There is a huge amount of public money in this document-a huge amount of public money has gone in to make this work, and yet almost every paragraph is highly emotive language, full of political effect, which could be lifted as it stands and used in a campaign speech by the Labor Party. Indeed, I have no doubt that much of what Mr Quinlan has produced here is actually Mr Quinlan's own handiwork, or perhaps that of people in his office.
Now, those who have been here for only three or six years might imagine that this is typical of what estimates committees always do. Not so, Mr Speaker. I will quote from the report of the 1994-95 Select Committee on Estimates.
Mr Hargreaves: Who was the chair of that?
MR HUMPHRIES: The chair was Ms Helen Szuty. In fact, I was the deputy chair, as I recall. Members included Mr Wayne Berry, Mrs Ellnor Grassby, et cetera. I want to quote a few words. This is about across-the-board savings. There was a 2 per cent efficiency cut across the whole government in that year.
The committee notes that the 2 per cent per annum efficiency dividend is in its third and final year, and that further savings of over $5 million in 1994-95 will be realised. It is again noted by the committee that agencies have not specifically identified those areas to be cut, and the budget figures have simply been reduced. The committee further notes and draws attention to recommendation 3.8-
which it then goes on to quote-
The committee recommends that the government provide details of when and where actual savings of 2 per cent have been made.
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