Page 1645 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 May 1990
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MR KAINE: The Prime Minister's determination not even to allow discussion on that matter and his determination that the unilateral decision of the Commonwealth would stand were a little disconcerting. It is a bit difficult to say just how we at our level of government might be able to deal with it. My proposition to the Prime Minister was fairly straightforward. It simply said that a three-year transition period, if applied from the date of self-government rather than a year prior to that, might have been reasonable but it was not reasonable given that the transition period began a year before self-government. I think the Leader of the Opposition has put the same argument to the Prime Minister, so I am not being inconsistent there or taking a partisan view on the matter.
I thought that, while a three-year period perhaps arguably was a reasonable period, it had to date from the date of self-government - from the time at which this Assembly had control over its own affairs. By declining to accept that, the Prime Minister is saying to us, in effect, that in a two-year period we have to adjust our budget to take up the additional funding currently being put into our revenue by the Commonwealth. This was assessed by the previous Minister for Finance at something in the order of $100m a year. We do not know whether that is a good figure or not but, even if it is close to that, to be required to make that kind of adjustment over a two-year period is, in my view, totally unreasonable. I would have thought that the Prime Minister would at least have agreed to meet with me and discuss the proposition rather than just reject it out of hand.
I was asked what the Government might do about it. I think I will have to again ask the Prime Minister to discuss this matter. It has been arbitrarily set aside without even any debate to find out what the position of this Government is, what we have done, what we are attempting to do to close the gap to start with, and what might be done to close the gap further. Secondly, I think that I and the other 16 members of this Assembly and the community generally ought to be putting a certain amount of pressure on our four Federal members and senators. Three of them are members of the Labor Government and one of them is a Minister in that Government. They do, after all, represent this community. I would think that we and, as I suggested, other members of this community ought to be applying as much pressure as we can - - -
Mr Berry: Why don't you just properly manage the Territory? That will do.
MR KAINE: I know that the big mouth over on the other side would not do that because he is not interested in having our budgetary situation set right. He would just like to spend $210m or so on fixing a hospital that we do not need. That is his approach to balancing the budget. We have heard from him before.
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