Page 2132 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 May 1991
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with the health system. Unfortunately, after next Friday, when the Premiers Conference makes their second determination about funding of the ACT, we have then to produce another budget for 1991-92 and the difficulties are going to be just as great. They are not going to go away. It is all very well when you are in opposition to say, "We will leave the schools open; we will close no hospitals; we will maintain the existing expenditures". The fact is that that cannot be done. It is like your own domestic budget. If you are earning only $1,000 a year, you cannot spend $1,500 unless you go and borrow it, and that gives you a debt that you must repay in the future.
If you think that is the way to go, look at Victoria, look at Tasmania, look at Western Australia. They are in ruin financially because they took that option. They maintained expenditure which they could not afford. They went and borrowed; they created enormous public debt which they are now being held to account for. If the Leader of the Opposition thinks that is the responsible way to go, and if the people in the visitors gallery, who are here obviously because they support the Labor Party, think that that is the reasonable and responsible way to go - - -
Mr Wood: They support their schools.
Mr Moore: They support their schools and the hospital. The schools, the hospital and the leasehold system.
Mr Wood: And their community.
Mr Moore: That is what you do not understand.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR KAINE: I will rephrase it. If they believe that what the Labor Party is promising can be presented in due course, they are wrong. It cannot. You, in opposition, if you become the Government, cannot maintain the school system at past levels of expenditure; you cannot maintain the hospital system and the health system at past levels of expenditure, because the money is not there. That is the bottom line.
Mr Connolly: You just watch.
MR KAINE: We will watch all right, with great interest. You cannot wave a wand and produce money. We know what our revenue is. The Commonwealth Grants Commission has acknowledged that our revenue now is similar to that raised everywhere else in Australia. We are not being subsidised on the revenue side of our budget. There is no further possibility of a significant increase in taxes and charges in the ACT. If Rosemary Follett, as Treasurer, attempts to do that she will be told by the community, "That is not acceptable. That is an unacceptably high level of taxation compared to what everybody else in Australia pays".
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