Page 4520 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Mr Moore: Read page 46.
MR KAINE: I suggest that Mr Moore read page 49, which shows, in the first paragraph, that funding for this function will be $247.6m this year and that it was $234.9m last year. Where is the reduction?
Mr Moore: That is not the first paragraph on page 49.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR KAINE: Page 49, under "Education and the Arts". I know that you are pretty dumb sometimes, but read the page. It then goes on, and it says:
After making adjustments for transferring functions -
that is functions transferred in and out of this particular element of the Budget -
the same real funding will be provided to Government schools in 1990-1991 as in 1989-1990.
Can you read that, Mr Moore?
Mr Moore: Yes.
MR KAINE: Then, on what do you base your assertion that education is suffering the brunt? It is totally untrue. It is more of the distortion, more of the misrepresentation that is constantly being presented in this debate. If you read on further you will discover that there is an additional $1.5m being provided this year for the full year effect of schools opened in 1989-1990. There is a further $450,000 that has been included for new schools which will open next year.
Where can you deduce from that fact, which is presented to you, that education is bearing the brunt of cost reductions? It is totally untrue, Mr Moore. I wish you would read the figures before you instead of making them up on the run. Further down page 49, it is noted that the bus subsidy is being transferred to ACTION. That is $7.9m. That is not a reduction in the amount of money being spent on education. It is merely a transfer out of the education vote to the urban services vote so that the buses can continue to operate.
If you are going to quote that as a reduction in the expenditure on education, it is a misrepresentation. All I ask is that people read the budget papers that they have; that they draw on what was said to them in amplification of this in the Estimates Committee; that they stop just making it up; and that they do not come here and make these wild, unsubstantiated, untrue statements that education is suffering the brunt. It fits alongside the other allegations by other members of the Opposition that we are
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