Page 3324 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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response to that comment, I suspect. She claims that the situation of which Mr Kaine has spoken so frequently and so eloquently, the magnitude of the problem that the Territory currently must address, does not really exist. It is a figment of Mr Kaine's imagination. We do not really have to worry about having a shortfall in our budgetary allocations from the Commonwealth. We do not really have to worry about falling standards or making do with less. It is all a weird fantasy that we have made up to justify our cuts in public health and education and so on and so forth.
Well, I do not believe that, and I do not think the people of the ACT believe that either. I think they know full well that this is not a lazy budget, but rather that we have taken the first serious step towards addressing the very serious budget problems that this Territory faces. Most people, I believe, know that the ACT cannot get away with easy decisions, cannot get away with cop-outs. But that is exactly what it is that those opposite suggest we should do. There are no easy answers and this Government has avoided that course of action. It has adopted hard positions on difficult questions.
It is obvious that Ms Follett and her Opposition have opposed every single revenue measure this Government has proposed, in one form or another. And, what is more, they have opposed every single expenditure reduction measure this Government has announced. I am not an economist, but I want to know how it is that the Opposition makes up the numbers. I want to know their vision of the Territory's finances and how their solution to the problems the Territory faces would present itself. I want to know what they would do. Nobody in this Territory has been treated to the luxury of that information. Nobody knows what Labor would do in our shoes. We can only assume that their attacks are based on the self-satisfied knowledge that only those opposite could possess, that they do not have to make any hard decisions until, at the very earliest, some time in March 1992. All I can say is: heaven help the Territory if they have the opportunity to do so even then, because the situation will be no better at that time.
It is obvious to me that in fact it is the Opposition which is lazy. If this Government, as they say opposite, is lazy, then the Opposition is absolutely bone idle. This budget is a balanced budget. It is a responsible budget, and it is a budget that looks to the future. We are doing what any good government would do in the same circumstances. We are restructuring the provision of services in the Territory to bring down the costs of providing those services, and to ensure those services of themselves can remain at the disposal of the people of the ACT.
We are making substantial savings from schools consolidation and from hospital restructuring. The restructuring that is going on in the health and education
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