Page 2600 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 8 August 1990
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Ms Follett: No, I balanced it.
MR KAINE: You did not talk about a surplus, but we managed that budget for the last six months of the year. We stopped making unnecessary and wasteful expenditure, and we brought the budget in with a surplus. That is last year's budget.
Now we come to the second bit of misrepresentation, because your question directed to Mr Humphries was: Did he know that Mr Kaine was developing a budget leading to a surplus when he was talking about school closures? I am developing a budget for this year. I am not saying that there will be a surplus on this budget. We will bring in a balanced budget. When Mr Humphries was developing his school consolidation program it was in the context of the development of this year's budget that we are about to enter into. But there is no question of a budget surplus at this stage. We are working hard even to produce a budget that will be balanced.
To misrepresent grossly that somehow or other my statement about last year's budget has any relevance in the context of school closures which are to take effect this year and the results of which will affect this year's budget is a gross and deliberate misrepresentation, and you know it.
Mr Moore: On a point of order, Mr Acting Speaker; under standing order 46 I claim to have been misrepresented and seek leave to make a personal explanation.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: How do you claim to have been misrepresented, Mr Moore?
Mr Moore: I claim to have been misrepresented in that the Chief Minister has suggested that I somehow misrepresented him in terms of a surplus in the budget, and that is simply not the case.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: I do not think he is talking about you, Mr Moore.
Mr Moore: He certainly is talking about me, and he pointed his finger at me. I asked the question and referred to this matter in the initial instance. Mr Acting Speaker, there have been only two budgets.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: I have not granted you leave yet, Mr Moore, because he did not name you. I think he might have mentioned Mr Berry's name and he pointed in the direction of the Opposition benches. It is probably drawing a bit of a long bow in those circumstances to say that he has directly misrepresented you.
Mr Moore: No, Mr Acting Speaker, not at all. He said that he has been misrepresented by three people who mentioned this particular budget surplus; and I was one of the people
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