Transcript No. 99/59

Paul Barratt has lost his case in the Federal Court today. Any comments on that?

I haven’t, I haven’t seen the judgement and …

The judgement basically states that the Prime Minister has the right to sack him.

Well it’s really, look it’s a matter for the Prime Minister and the Defence

Minister. I won’t be adding any comment to it.

Treasurer, there seems to be confusion about growth, like, you’ve suggested at one

stage that growth might come in, in the threes and then yesterday you said 3 per cent. All

indications are that it’s going to outdo the Budget forecasts. What do you reckon?

Well we put out a forecast at Budget time for 1999-2000 of 3 per cent and we won’t

be updating that until we do the Mid-Year Review. We’ll be looking at a Mid-Year

Review probably for release in November of this year. We are expecting a slow down of

growth, but it’s a slow down off exceptionally high growth. And if it were to slow

down to 3 per cent then that’s the kind of slow down you’d want. Three per cent

by world standards is considered strong growth, that’s growth which will be in excess

of the US, and Europe and the developed world. But we won’t be looking at our

forecasts again until we release the Mid-Year Review.

Upside risks, you think?

Well we haven’t got the final quarter yet for the current year, the year ending in

June of 1999 – we’ll get that on the second of September. As you know we were looking

at about 4 for the year ending June of 1999. When we get the next one, it may well be

that it’s a little better than that, but we will wait until we see it. The

international economy is slowly improving, things have turned in Korea, things are turning

I think in Malaysia and Thailand; so the international climate is perhaps a little more

benign than it was looking three or six months ago.

Can you give us any further indications when Business Tax Reform and the Review of

Business Tax Reform and your in-principle announcements will be announced?

Well as I said earlier, after the Cabinet’s had a look at the report, then we will

be making some announcements. But Cabinet has had some discussions in relation to this and

it will continue to do so. These are complicated issues and the Review itself had twelve

months to look at all of these questions, so you’ve got to let the Cabinet come to

grips with some of the issues, quite complicated issues.

Any chance of seeing it within a couple of weeks?

Well it really just depends on, on what else is on. If we have other major issues like,

airports and other things it can crowd out the agenda.

Can we expect to see Capital Gains Tax announcements at the same time as Business Tax

Reform announcements?

Well, you can expect to see announcements on Business Tax, and Capital Gains is one of

the issues obviously that’s been discussed.

Okay thanks.