Page 2143 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 May 1991
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The hard part is to say, "Those leases are to be renewed at full premium; but, in order to protect the businesses, we are going to put the leasehold matter back on its appropriate footing and charge rent from that time. We will change it to a rental footing and we could even earmark 50 per cent, for example, of that rental to productivity, not to land speculation". Then you would be making a hard and good decision.
When you are looking at your budget, instead of making what you call hard decisions and attacking the public school system, you ought to be looking at the relationship between capital and recurrent expenditure. Anybody in Canberra who has eyes can see that, as far as welfare goes, we are quite well off from a capital perspective. We have problems with our recurrent budget. A minor adjustment between capital and recurrent expenditure is one method of resolving the problems, but that requires hard decisions. You can certainly do that. It is a possibility, but it is something about which you have given no message.
I know that we are going to disagree on that because it provides advantage to business to continue spending money on the capital budget. There is absolutely no reason why the capital budget cannot be reduced a little and the recurrent budget increased, which would resolve this whole problem of school closures, hospital closures and so forth; but you do not have the guts to make that sort of hard decision.
The decisions that you have made have been possible only because the Residents Rally has been in league with you. But they have finally been booted out and now stand up and say, "Well, we have decided that it was time we went, and we did it only because we stood up". They got caught out trying to grandstand once again. They were caught out trying to grandstand, to see whether they could slowly separate themselves from the Liberals because they realise that they are doing so badly in all the opinion polls, that the people of Canberra are fed up.
Mr Duby: One per cent.
MR MOORE: Mr One per cent Collaery talks about - - -
Mr Duby: No, One per cent Moore.
MR MOORE: Mr One per cent Moore? That is not me. I am quite happy to go to an election. Mr Duby, if you try to picture in your mind the front page of the Canberra Times and look at the stature of those people, you, as you sit down, are about right. So, Mr Duby, I would hardly take any joy in that as far as you are concerned.
Mr Duby: I am ahead of Dennis.
MR MOORE: Mr Duby, claiming that you are ahead of Dennis is hardly some cop - and, anyway, I do not think it is true. I do not know how you made that interpretation.
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