HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-03 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

TRUMPS

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:53): My question is again to the Minister for Transport. Can he advise why the Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure did not rectify the manner in which the commonwealth grant funding is treated when the matter was first raised with him by the Auditor-General three years ago? In the Auditor-General's Report tabled yesterday in this place, it states:

In each of the past three years the department has received commonwealth grants which it has recognised as deferred income, a liability representing revenue received in advance. The grants relate to funding received in advance for projects which are planned to be complete over a number of years. The projects include capital works related to road infrastructure and a planning research project. The accounting treatment adopted by the department is inconsistent with the recognition criteria incorporated in AASB1004 and APV5, and results in understatement of the department's operating income by the amount of the unrecognised grants, i.e., deferred income.

The Hon. P.F. CONLON (Elder—Minister for Transport, Minister for Infrastructure, Minister for Energy) (14:55): I do not mean to be unkind. Asking this question does suggest that the member for Morphett perhaps has the short-term memory of a goldfish, because he asked the same question—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Yes, and if you could stop talking and listen for once in your life I will provide you with some information. The member for Morphett and I think the Leader of the Opposition himself may have asked questions about this. I will go back over it and answer it again. I think he first asked it well over a year ago. It is all down to $100 million that your friends in the commonwealth government sent me a letter about some years ago. It was 24 hours before the end of the financial year, and they said, 'Do you want $100 million for the Sturt Highway?' We thought it was a tad difficult to spend that $100 million on a road in the last 24 hours of that financial year, so we asked Treasury for some advice on whether it could be taken—I think the proper term is 'deferred revenue', or something like that—otherwise, we would have had to refuse it. The Treasury advice was that it could be accounted one way. The Auditor-General's advice subsequently was that it should be accounted this way. Had it been accounted that way, we would have had to refuse it and, of course, the member for Schubert would not have had a large swag of commonwealth money spent in his electorate.

Can I assure the member for Morphett—as I did the very last time he asked this question—that, where a matter is in issue, I will always decide in favour of spending commonwealth money in South Australia. If it happens again—I apologise to the house—I will decide in favour of spending commonwealth money in South Australia. If I understand the import of the question from the member for Morphett, he would have gone with the accountants and sent $100 million back to Canberra. Well, I would rather have the road than the valued view of an accounting standard.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT