Page 1668 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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ADJOURNMENT
MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Whalan: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
APPROPRIATION BILL 1989-90
Debate resumed.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Labor Party promised a number of things - expansion of community health services, and that health would be a top priority for a Labor government. Now, of course, we see that this top priority is to be cut as well. The point is, of course, that Labor has in a whole range of areas failed to keep its election commitments.
Another promise was drawn to my attention today, of which members may or may not be aware. In its manifesto, the ALP made a promise about an international arts festival. I quote from the ALP's draft budget, its pre-election budget:
An amount of $200,000 has been allocated to fund the development of an arts festival around Floriade.
I gather from that that the Government has promised to spend extra money on building an arts festival around Floriade, not that it will spend the same amount of money it was spending previously on Floriade. It promised to put in $200,000 that was not there before. And what is happening in the arts area? Actual expenditure in 1988-89 was $2.502m; the 1989-90 estimate is $5.106m. There is a cut of $400,000 when the Government had promised an increase of $200,000 - another promise gone out the window.
This has been a budget of wasted opportunity, as I said, and I think I can best express it this way: if in the lead-up to 1991 when the special Commonwealth funding which has been promised will be cut off the ACT in that period has to face one or two more budgets of the kind that was handed down this Tuesday, we will be in a very sorry state; in a calamitous position. This raises the question: if these issues are important, as of course they are, why has the Government not addressed them now - not in the next budget or the budget after but now, in this budget? I think Mr Duby best summed up the sentiment of this budget when he said that this Government is fiddling while Rome burns.
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