Page 2599 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 8 August 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR KAINE: I will get to the Hansard in a minute, if you would sit there and be quiet, little boy, for just a little while. As I said, Mr Acting Speaker, three times today I have been grossly and deliberately misrepresented. I want members of the media to listen to this, because this is typical of the behaviour of these people over here. It is not the first time that they have done it. It is time they were nailed to the wall about it.
They are relying, Mr Acting Speaker, on a deliberate misquote from yesterday's Hansard. They asked the question constantly of Mr Humphries: knowing that I was bringing down a budget with a surplus, what did he have to say about that? I have not said that I am bringing down a budget with a surplus. At no point have I said that.
I have maintained, since long before I was in government and certainly since I have been in government, that I would have great difficulty bringing in a balanced budget. I am experiencing that difficulty now, and on 11 September I will bring in a balanced budget, but not without a great deal of difficulty. I have not said, I repeat, at any time that I would bring in a budget with a surplus.
The quotation to which these three people opposite have referred today relates to last year's budget, and I will read it. So that there is no question, I will read the matter in its entirety, which Mr Berry declined to do. I am reading from the Hansard. I said:
We have not even brought down our first budget yet but what we have done is to bring in the former Treasurer's budget ... with a budget surplus ...
Mr Moore: Keep going; read it all.
MR KAINE: I will read it all:
... after making some very significant decisions after we took Government. We have brought in last year's budget -
which was the previous Treasurer's budget -
with a budget surplus ...
And so we did. The facts are on the record. I was saying specifically that we brought in last year's budget with a surplus, and we did that because we took control, when we took government, and we stopped a lot of expenditure that would otherwise have taken place under Ms Follett's budget, which would not have been a surplus had that expenditure been made. We began to manage the budget - - -
Ms Follett: Do you have a surplus or not?
MR KAINE: We ended up last year with your budget, which you did not predict would bring in a surplus. Would you like to deny that?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .