Page 4726 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 28 November 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MS FOLLETT: I have a supplementary question. Would the Chief Minister acknowledge that the failure to obtain funds from that trust fund was due to the poor standard of the projects that he put forward and/or to his personal failure to even attempt to meet with the Prime Minister on the matter?
MR KAINE: No, I do not concede anything of the kind. First of all, the principal project that was put forward for consideration was the restructuring of the hospital system. It meets the criteria set by the Commonwealth in every respect. It is a project that is part of the restructuring and moving towards self-sufficiency on the part of the Territory. It is a project that aims to save $8.5m a year in operating expenses under estimates made in 1989, which your former Minister for Health would well know about. The estimates were made during his time. It meets, in every way, the criteria that were set by the Commonwealth for the release of funds from that fund.
It is interesting that the Prime Minister, in his response, justifies giving money to Tasmania because their accounting is in poor shape; he justifies not giving us any because our accounting is in good shape. One can only assume that, if you are profligate with public money and run yourself into financial difficulties, the Commonwealth is only too willing to bail you out, particularly if you are a Labor Government; but, if you exercise proper financial management, produce a balanced recurrent budget and do all of the things that the Federal Government asks you to do in terms of restructuring, micro-economic reform and the like, and you come up with a good budget, when you ask for some of your own money out of the fund, the answer is, "You can go and borrow it".
Ms Follett: You said that in your budget papers.
MR KAINE: Since Ms Follett has raised the point, I said that we were aiming to borrow $44m. We would prefer to borrow less. If the Commonwealth would release some of this money from the fund we would be able to borrow less, the public debt would be less, and the future cost of repaying that public debt would be less. That seems to me to be a very prudent approach to financial management, but the Prime Minister and the Treasurer have seen fit to keep our money in the trust account and to tell us, in effect, "You can always get over your restructuring - - -
Members interjected.
MR KAINE: The response that we got was, "You can always get over your restructuring problem by borrowing more money".
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .