Page 2074 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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the Alliance Government. I think that to add to their burdens by putting their pay in doubt is really more than human nature should be asked to take.
Mr Speaker, it is not acceptable, either, to throw into jeopardy vital government services like health, education and other services to the public, because to do so is a very underhanded means to try to force an election. It is not a means that is acceptable to the Labor Party, and we will therefore not be using that weapon in the same outrageously cynical way that Liberal oppositions have used it in other States and, indeed, in Federal Parliament.
The other aspect of the Bill that I want to touch upon concerns its relevance to this Government's financial management, although I think to call it "financial management" is to be quite extraordinarily generous. Events since last year's Supply Act show how this Government has totally lost control of financial management. Our community has grown tired of opening the Canberra Times in the morning to read about the latest budget blow-out. Mr Kaine's blustering and his attempts to deny responsibility by blaming his public servants or other anonymous management, as he did today, lack any credibility because the problems are clear and those problems have not been tackled by this Government.
The problems became clear, at least in the health arena, as a result of a Treasury inquiry which was, in fact, commissioned by my Government in 1989. The problems are management problems as well as ones of political will. Any normal government and any responsible Minister, any halfway competent Treasurer, would have given orders long ago to deal with these problems. The fact is that this Government has lurched along, trying to avoid the issues, to cover up the problems or to blame someone else. That is its favourite tactic. And, of course, the Government has become a laughing stock as a result. The Government has not only been shown to be unable to control expenditure; it is unable to budget properly in the first place. The whole hospitals redevelopment saga proves that point. The Government has no real idea what the hospitals redevelopment will cost and it does not care, because the decision was essentially ideological in nature.
Mr Speaker, anybody who sat through question time today and heard the faltering responses of the Treasurer and the Minister for Health on the issue of what the hospitals redevelopment might cost would agree with me. They have no idea what it will cost. They would not even hazard a guess and, in fact, on the question of where they are going to find the money for their blow-out in the recurrent expenditure, Mr Humphries said, "I have no idea". It was hardly news to us that he has no idea. Under constant questioning in this house he has continually demonstrated that he has no idea, but I think even more serious is the fact that the Treasurer has no idea either.
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