Page 1474 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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find, if he bothers to read the Grants Commission reports of the past, that some individuals in this house have made very significant contributions to those inquiries. Some of us have, but no member of the opposition has made any contribution to any one of those three previous Grants Commission inquiries.
I do not know how they feel qualified to make any comment when not one of them has made a contribution; and, of course, none of them will make a contribution to the next one that is just starting either. Some of us on this side of the house will because we know how the Grants Commission works; we understand its mechanisms; we understand the fiscal equalisation approach that it uses. We will make contributions. Let me see your contribution when the time comes. It will be like it has been in the past, a big zero.
The Government has not yet addressed the revenue side of the budget. Somebody on the other side of the house made this point. No, we have not looked at the revenue side, but if members opposite had bothered to read my strategy statement they would know that I commented there that we are looking first at the expenditure side because - and I have said it many times before - I believe this community is now taxed pretty much at the levels at which it should expect to be taxed. We are taxed at pretty much the same levels and we pay the same kinds of taxes as everybody else does. What the opposition is saying is that we have to look at the revenue side first and we have to become the highest taxing body politic in Australia. If we do not cut our expenditures first and we have to raise the taxes to cover the $37m deficiency, this would be the highest taxing body politic in Australia. Is that what you are really advocating? Of course you are not, because you would not have the guts to do it and I have more commonsense than to do it.
You look first at the expenditure side to see where you can achieve efficiencies, where you can achieve economies and then, if necessary, you look at the revenue side to see what you can do there. When we have identified all the savings that can be made, when we have achieved all the possible efficiencies that we can identify, when we have made all the possible productivity gains that can be identified, when we have developed a lean, effective public service, then we will move on to the revenue measures, as any sensible budgeter would. Just as we are facing up to the hard decisions on the expenditure side, we will also face up to the hard decisions on the revenue side when we come to them.
In all of this there is something that the people in the opposition have never really understood: you have to balance your social conscience and your financial responsibility. We happen to have done both. You lot on that side will forgo anything in the interests of social conscience. Lord knows where the money is going to come
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