Page 3345 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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Also on page 2 she claimed that she changed last year's budget after community consultation. I would submit, Mr Speaker, that, if you compare the forward estimates that she put out before the so-called sham of budgetary consultation started and you then look at the budget that she produced about five months later, there are absolutely no changes between the forward estimates that she put out for so-called consultation and the budget that she finally brought down. So the community consultation process produced nothing.
I will move on to page 4 of her speech where she says:
The Government is still hell-bent on attacking the public sector, privatising public services such as health and education and slashing public sector jobs.
Great emotional rhetoric, Mr Speaker, but not a bit of truth to it whatsoever. Nowhere is the Government, in this budget or in any other document, talking about privatising anything in health or education; not one single thing. But, of course, the Leader of the Opposition has no difficulty in saying these sorts of things. She is so deep into Labor Party politics and rhetoric that she does not care what she says - true or untrue.
Let us move on to page 5. She says, in connection with planning, that this Government has not progressed this issue one iota. There are five Bills that have been out there for some months now for public consultation. They are currently being revised to take into account what the public has said. They will go out for a further one month's consultation with the agreement of Mr Connolly, who said that they needed further time, and at the end of that period those five Bills will be on the table here for debate. They have been progressed more than one iota; we have, in fact, five very comprehensive and very good Bills on planning. But the Leader of the Opposition does not want to know about that. She does not want to be confused by the facts on anything.
Going to page 11 of her speech: the hospital project, she says, has meant huge increases. I do not know what figures Ms Follett has been looking at, but we started off with a budget of $154m in last year's dollars. It remains $154m in last year's dollars. There has been no increase whatsoever. But, of course, Ms Follett does not want to be confused by the facts. It suits her to appeal to her audience and to say that there have been massive increases. There have been no increases. A lot of what Ms Follett said is absolutely and unequivocally ideological rubbish that bears no relationship to the facts whatsoever. But that does not stop her saying it.
Mr Berry got up and said something about how awful it was that Mr Humphries actually had the effrontery to attack Ms Follett. He then spent 15 minutes on a personal attack on
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