Page 2092 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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supplement the hospital base funding by $2.6m from the Treasurer's Advance. We did that. By the way, supplementing from the Treasurer's Advance was a recommendation from your own Treasury report in 1989. Yet, when we do it on this side of the chamber in 1990-91 you say that it is reprehensible. What is the difference, Mr Berry? You explain that, Mr - - -
Mr Duby: No, it is called accounting. He does not understand it.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right; he does not understand it. What is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander in this place, quite obviously. I will not go through the rest of those, Mr Speaker; they are in Hansard. They were all acted upon, and that is the problem.
Mr Berry: No, they were not.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is the problem. Mr Berry can get up in this place and say what was not acted upon. The fact is that they were, and I will give you proof of the fact that they were. What questions has the Opposition asked, since it lost government in December 1989, about the implementation of that Treasury report? I cannot recall a single one.
Ms Follett: You are wrong.
MR HUMPHRIES: Quote it. I asked you on a previous occasion to cite me a question that you had asked about the implementation of the Treasury report and you have not done so - not in that debate or since then. You go and do so. I cannot recall any occasion where anything at all was asked. You obviously were not concerned. You could not have cared less. You did not understand or you did not care. You just did not know.
Mr Speaker, the Opposition is working on that flawed assumption, that if there is a budget blow-out it must be the Government's fault and therefore the Government should wear the blame for it. It says, "Why will not Mr Humphries wear the blame for this matter?". Again, I have to ask what blame Mr Berry wore for his own budget mismanagement in 1989.
It has been suggested that this Government has blown the money, that we have spent it hand over fist, that we have been wasting the money left, right and centre; but, of course, in the context of that debate, there has not been a single attempt to explain how that has occurred or why it has occurred. In making this case, not one example has been put forward by the Opposition to show that there has been mismanagement, or to show precisely where the Government has made a mistake. Where has it made the mistake? That has not been put forward. It has not been explained. No example has been given.
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