Page 4528 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Mr Connolly: It is an arithmetic error. You are short half a million dollars.
MR KAINE: It is not a straight, arithmetic progression, Mr Connolly. There is not a direct arithmetic, one-to-one relationship between dollars saved on the one hand and dollars spent on the other. There is not a direct one-to-one relationship between dollars spent on one school and dollars spent on another school, as Mr Wood went to great lengths to explain earlier in the debate. You have reduced everything to the simplistic terms that Mr Stevenson uses in trying to explain the relationships in the budget. It is an absurdity. If we were that simple we would accept your solution, but we are not that simple. I do not think you are that simple either.
MR MOORE (4.41): I am glad to hear the Treasurer and to see his arrogant smirking. I think we should rename him "Joh Bjelke-Kaine" for the way he blusters on this sort of thing. As soon as the Treasurer feels a little bit sensitive, he gets up and blusters, and waves, and expects some of us to back down to this Joh Bjelke-Petersen sort of arrogance.
Let me give an example. In responding to my saying that this Government is allowing education to wear the brunt of the cuts, the Chief Minister was aware that I separated capital expenditure from recurrent expenditure. He knew that when I was quoting from the figures on page 46. He was aware that I was using recurrent expenditure. In an attempt to cover up, he blusters his way through and uses a combination of the capital and the recurrent expenditure that he refers to on page 49. The Chief Minister is aware, and we are also aware, that there is an extra $15m spent on capital expenditure overall.
That sort of blustering, Mr Kaine, will convince nobody. I am not likely to back down under that sort of approach. When you come to me and you can illustrate that it is not the case, then we will get somewhere. It was further illustrated by Mr Humphries when he used the word "manpower" in relation to his 4,000 letters. As far as that staffing time goes, which is the term that I use, it is still - - -
Mr Duby: That you use?
MR MOORE: Yes, which I use. That is what I said.
Mr Duby: He uses "manpower".
MR MOORE: I know that he uses "manpower", and it says something about the person. The fact that Mr Humphries is using it is just one example of where he has failed to respond. It is, of course, very interesting when he is talking about Mr Weston, and the fact that he had seen Mr Weston and given him half an hour of his time. In fact, it
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