Page 1651 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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management. In practical terms, that means facing up to the reality; identifying those areas of public expenditure which can be eliminated without affecting the direct delivery of services to the consumer; ensuring that private enterprise takes on tasks which it can undertake with beneficial results for the community; and generally improving the efficiency of the Administration by eliminating waste.
Mr Speaker, it will of course entail repairing the damage that this budget will do. I do not intend to get into a debate at this point on the detail of the budget. It is, after all, a debate in principle and the detailed debate will take place in the Treasurer's Estimates Committee. However, there are things that we will have to redress quickly. We will certainly get rid of the tax on pornography. In common with all other legislative jurisdictions in Australia, we will ban all pornographic videos. The comfort currently given to the Government's friends in the pornography purveying business will be short-lived. We will clearly have to move quickly to reverse the decision impacting directly on the teachers in our schools. There are other adverse effects of this budget which will require urgent attention to reduce the long-term impact on our community. I am sure that others in this debate will also focus on the repercussions of this Government's budget.
In conclusion, Mr Speaker, the Opposition finds the Government's budget to be a budget which lacks courage, conviction and vision. It fails to address the major financial problems with which we are faced. We believe that the Government must accept full responsibility for the budget and not seek to spread that responsibility to others. The Government must accept the consequences of its demonstrated lack of competence and commitment. We will pursue the critique in detail in the proposed Estimates Committee and to a much shorter time scale than the Chief Minister envisages.
MR COLLAERY (3.38): Mr Speaker, I follow the effective critique given by my colleague Mr Kaine and direct my comments in a slightly different vein. We have before us this first major product of the Follett Government's much touted public consultation process. It is not, if I may say so, a very auspicious beginning.
Despite the rhetoric, despite the claims repeated throughout the budget documents which can only lead us to the conclusion that "the lady doth protest too much", the two months of consultation have not taken us very far. We can also see in Ms Follett's budget paper No. 2 a foreshadowing of the Government's efforts to sidle away from community consultation. While the concept will remain, she claims that the method may need to change in future. Obviously the community's voice brought the Government uncomfortably close to feeling the need to respond with changes to the budget. It has weathered the
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