Page 1473 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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people who have been involved in the management of the hospital system, might have put something constructive on the table, but you did not.
Mr Berry: We did and you overturned it.
MR KAINE: You did exactly what you have always done.
Mr Berry: We did and you overturned it.
MR KAINE: You are just a knocker. That is what we have had for the last hour or hour and a half of this debate, a lot of knocking - not a single constructive proposition. Correction; I think that Mr Moore, with due respect, made a couple of useful suggestions and I have to exclude him from this criticism. But the Opposition has contributed absolutely nothing about how to deal with the fact that next budget year we will have a $37m deficiency if we do nothing. This is not very surprising because members of the Opposition had the problem to deal with in this current fiscal year and they did not address it then either. They produced a budget that was the easiest one to get out; they did not have to upset anybody; they did not have to make any hard decisions; they just put out the easiest possible budget and thought that hopefully next year would take care of itself. Mr Speaker, next year is not going to take care of itself. This Government recognises the problem and is going to do something about fixing it.
In the course of the debate, the members on the opposite side have come up with some rather peculiar statements. For example, Ms Follett and Mrs Grassby have said, "The Chief Minister promised us a five-year financial plan, and what have we got - a strategy". A strategy and a five-year financial plan are not the same thing. Of course, we had to produce a strategy, and out of the strategy come the subsequent budgets, year by year. I said, and if the people on the other side ever bothered to read anything or listen to anything that I have ever said they would know that I have always said, that in the latter half of each calendar year we will produce a five-year rolling financial plan. In the first half of the year we will produce the budget; in the second half of the year we will produce the five-year financial plan.
You will see the first five-year financial plan, Mrs Grassby, towards the end of this fiscal year after we get this budget out of the way and we can concentrate on developing it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the strategy. The strategy simply sets down the climate in which we are operating and the broad approach to how we are going to solve it.
People opposite talked about our approach to the Grants Commission. We will deal effectively with the impending Grants Commission inquiry in the interests of this community, just as some of us have in previous inquiries. This is one of Mr Moore's points of criticism. He will
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