Page 2398 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Grants Commission invited the ACT Administration, at that time, to explain why expenditure had increased so markedly during 1985 to 1987 - actually 28 per cent at that stage. As Treasurer, have you simply decided your priorities are to increase police spending at an enormous rate while cutting back on education, or is your Government simply the incompetent money manager that the school closures debate has illustrated?
MR KAINE: I will start with the end of the question first, Mr Acting Speaker. The edge to the question is that we are incompetent money managers. That remains to be seen, Mr Moore. We have not even brought down our first budget yet but what we have done is to bring in the former Treasurer's budget, after making some very significant decisions after we took Government. We have brought in last year's budget with a budget surplus because we stopped spending a lot of useless money that they would have spent if they had stayed there.
Ms Follett: But you passed the budget. It is your budget.
MR KAINE: It is your budget. You were the Treasurer. You brought it down. It is your budget and you still live with it.
Ms Follett: I will do the next one, too, if you like.
MR KAINE: You will have a go but I tell you what, you will not stuff it up like you did the last one. You asked me a question. Let me answer it, because the next part of the equation of incompetent financial management flows from the fact that when we took Government and we took out our forward estimates in February we had made no decisions affecting the outcomes of last year's budget at all, but merely projecting Ms Follett's budget into this year with no policy changes whatsoever would have produced a $37m deficit. That is financial incompetence for you - $37m.
Ms Follett: That is rubbish.
MR KAINE: The forward estimates are on the table. It is a public document and it is as a result of your budget - no changes whatsoever. That is a matter of record. You can talk about rubbish. If you want to talk about your budget that way that is fine because that is what it was.
You talk about the 6 per cent reduction in the Education Department. There is no such target, no such target in connection with the Education Department's budget at all. I have not put a $6m savings target on it. Once I had discovered that we had a $37m potential deficit next year and it was obvious that we had to start doing something to eliminate it, I did a study - - -
Ms Follett: It is suddenly a potential deficit.
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