Page 2197 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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Whilst I exculpate much of our competent senior bureaucracy, the fact is that, when the finance and coordinating departments are not balanced with an economic planning council of the type sought by the Rally, social balance is lost. We have seen that recently on the national stage, where the move to a new federalism has so frightened the Left that it has made a most remarkable and uneasy marriage of convenience with Mr Hawke to crush the rationalism stemming from the Federal Treasury. On a smaller stage, we have had the same struggle in this Territory.
In March, on the eve of my departure to the social welfare Ministers conference in Adelaide, I was informed by a Treasury official on behalf of the Chief Minister that I should not endorse any resolutions which could impede the untying of Federal grants and the move to the new federalism espoused by Mr Greiner and the Federal Treasury. That meeting of social welfare Ministers in Adelaide was a sombre affair, with some of us, regardless of our political persuasion, unhappy with the caveat that we had received from our treasuries. So, I stress, Mr Speaker - and I make no personal accusations whatsoever in this debate - that the ACT was not alone in embracing economic rationalism, and that that way of working and the Greiner model, in those days, seemed to be the ones. Perhaps we were all taken in.
In any event, Trevor Kaine's March budget restatement, entitled From Strength to Strength, outlined four laudable goals for establishing a fair and responsible approach to financial management, namely, to promote the development of the private sector; to produce a balanced recurrent budget; to minimise borrowings; and to make better use of the Territory's existing capital base. In delivering that statement, Mr Kaine said that he believed that the outcome of the 1990-91 budget would reinforce those goals not only as achievable but also as the most responsible approach to managing the Territory's finances. He went on to say:
... a budget is not a static thing. My job as Treasurer is to keep the budget strategy under review as economic circumstances change.
I believe that the Chief Minister did those things, and I believe that he worked conscientiously to achieve and to carry out that level of surveillance which he had undertaken to do; but, within government there was a sense of frustration as we pressed for reforms over a long period - more than a year - at a time when we were, of course, accused of going outside our portfolio areas of interest. Of course, that was within the health area, where what was ultimately recommended in the Enfield report was basically what we had been saying all along.
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