Page 4420 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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you need an ambulance. It may not be there in time. Of course, Mr Humphries will not feel bad about that. I suggest, Mr Humphries, that you drive very carefully so that do you not need an ambulance, because chickens may come home to roost, Mr Humphries, and you might be at the end of that.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I feel very sad to live in a city that I think was one of the best cities and had some of the best services of any city. Unfortunately, slowly they are being demolished, one by one, from schools to hospitals to health centres. People used to say how lucky we were to live in Canberra because we had all these wonderful facilities. I wonder what they will say at the end of the term of this Government. All I say to Mr Humphries is: get used to being in opposition. I am quite sure that you will be back here after the next election because you will have the numbers in the Liberal Party, and I am quite sure that the Chief Minister will be back here; but I can tell you that nobody else over there is going to be back here. I hope that the Chief Minister is used to sitting there and Mr Humphries is used to sitting there, because you are going to be there for a long, long time.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (3.42): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I sometimes wonder how many times the Opposition can repeat the same old misrepresentations and distortions before even they begin to suspect that they do not ring true and there is something slightly hollow about them. I have listened patiently now while Mr Berry went through his usual routine. It is like a gramophone - you turn it on, crank it up and away it goes. You get all the words about the rich versus the poor, the cruel, calculating Government - it just goes on and on. Even the press gallery do not want to listen to it any more. I must say that I was disappointed that Mrs Grassby repeated the same error and made statements that she knows not to be true. She seems to believe that if you say these things often enough somebody might begin to believe them. In fact, nobody will.
I do not think anybody could argue with the fact that this year and next year and perhaps for a couple of years thereafter the ACT will be facing a very significant financial challenge. There is going to be a downward adjustment of the money that comes to us from the Commonwealth, and we had better be ready for that. For the Opposition to close its eyes to that and say that it is never going to happen, that we can go blithely along on the basis that that is never going to happen and then suddenly fall off the financial cliff on 30 June 1991, is absolutely crazy. And yet, all we get from the Opposition is: there is no problem; we do not need to make any adjustments; you do not need to put taxes up; you do not need to make cuts in your expenditure; and you can borrow as much as you like. That seems to be the general thesis. I know that that is not true, and I suspect that most people out there in the community know that that is not true, because they
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