Page 220 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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running down the ACT education system and privatising our health system by closing public hospitals. Of course, you have also flagged that you are going to be privatising the public transport system, by contracting it out. What, I ask you, Mr Kaine, will be the result for the people of Canberra? The result will be that there will be fewer services available to them and what services are available will only be at an increased cost.
I think that it is time that the people of Canberra know the truth about your so-called justification for imposing a $100m cost cutting on them. The truth is that you are conning the people of Canberra by distorting the facts. You say that the Grants Commission and the Commonwealth Government have predetermined that we will receive $100m less in funding from June 1991 and, Mr Kaine, you know this is not true. The transitional funding arrangements with the Commonwealth give us a further two years to adjust to State-type funding. Mr Kaine apparently seems to believe that the Commonwealth have reneged on that already but the evidence is that there will be transitional funding at the very least. That is the reason why the Commonwealth established the transitional funding trust account.
Mr Kaine: Yes. They will give us back the $23m they took off you.
Mr Humphries: This woman believes in tooth fairies.
Mr Kaine: That is really transitional funding.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MS FOLLETT: There are two other factors which Mr Kaine probably does not know about, although he should. He is a person who claims to have been involved in finance in the public sector for some time. Let me reiterate them for his benefit. Firstly, the Grants Commission's assessments are not translated directly by the Premiers' Conference into shares of Commonwealth assistance grants. I have the benefit there that Mr Kaine does not, in that I have attended a Premiers' Conference. The special revenue assistance grants are generally provided to States to assist with the adjustment to change in relativities. This has been the case for the Northern Territory, for South Australia and for Tasmania in recent years. They are the smaller States, Mr Kaine, such as we are ourselves. Secondly, the Commonwealth does not tend to reduce funding to a State or Territory in nominal terms. Adjustments of funding to a fully comparable basis are always carried out through gradual real reductions. If this precedent is followed, and we have no reason to suppose that it will not be, then we can expect nominal payments to remain constant, at worst.
All this means an adjustment process which will probably end around 1994. So I believe, Mr Speaker, Mr Kaine is scaremongering in telling the people of Canberra that we
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