Page 1031 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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MR KAINE (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (9.07), in reply: I assume, Mr Speaker, that no other member of the Labor Opposition wants to add anything to the debate, which is typical. They seem to have single-shot guns these days. One of them gets up and fires off a few ideological barrages and then sits down, and then they all go home. They might leave one to hold the fort, but not to contribute anything to the debate.
I must say that I was somewhat disappointed and surprised, in some respects, by Ms Follett's response. On the other hand, in other areas, I was neither surprised nor disappointed. For example, in terms of the hospital closures, we got the old tirade that we are dismantling the public hospital system. So, we fall back on all the ideological phrases that they can drag up, time and time again.
The fact is that we are not dismantling the public hospital system. We are not decreasing public hospital beds, which was another accusation she made; and so it goes on. It does not matter whether it is the truth or not, just throw it out and somebody might listen and somebody might hear. I was disappointed, in connection with the school closures, that we were not told that we were destroying the social fabric of the society that we live in. Somehow she missed that one. I just remind her that she missed the opportunity to get in another one of those ideological plugs. The Leader of the Opposition, as usual, added nothing to the debate, in connection with the forward estimates. As usual, she made no constructive comment. She offered no suggestions as to how we might do it better, but then she never does.
She did not handle it very well when she was the Treasurer. I submit that she must go home, night after night, and breathe a sigh of relief that she is not the Treasurer, because she knows that there are difficult decisions to be made. She knows that we are making them. She knows that sometimes some of these decisions are not popular. We do not shy away from that. I wonder how she would handle it if she were sitting in this chair now, having to make these decisions. She confronted nothing when she was Treasurer.
I claim that when I was Leader of the Opposition we did make constructive comments. I remember very well, in the debate about her first budget, criticising it because it really took no initiatives to address the problems of the day. I put forward a scenario as to how she might deal with the health and hospital system. In fact, the outline that I gave then is exactly what this Government is implementing today. I believed then that there were things that should be done. I pointed them out to her when she was Chief Minister and Treasurer. Of course, she did not choose to hear. She did none of those things. She took up no suggestions, and she was devoid of ideas herself. In a way, the kind of response that we have does not surprise me.
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