Page 2208 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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As the Chief Minister himself said, he was elected not to win a popularity poll but to do a job and to do it properly and responsibly, and I believe that he has done so. Certainly the Liberal members and the two No Self Government members of this coalition have done that and are here today as a seven-person minority Government.
We live in hard economic times, Mr Speaker. The ACT has been progressively on a self-government footing since 1986. We have heard a lot of ranting and raving from the Labor Party opposite and, indeed, from the Residents Rally, too, and other people in this Assembly in relation to the hospitals and the schools. Let us talk about Royal Canberra Hospital. That should have been refurbished by the Federal Labor Government back in 1983 and 1984, along with a number of other things that the Federal Labor Government should have done for the Territory. It did not do so. It left this Government and this Assembly with some very hard decisions to make because it did not take the required action at the time.
Let us not delude ourselves about self-government, either, Mr Speaker. We have self-government, a State style of self-government because that is the cheapest option for the Federal Parliament. It is much better for it to let the ACT go it alone, so that it can save money, than to continue to pour in the money that was put into Canberra before self-government.
The Grants Commission report, unfortunately, states that we are still overfunded and, of course, did not the Federal Government latch onto that and give this Territory less still in the last Premiers Conference? I think that is, unfortunately, going to be a trend that we are just going to have to get used to. Canberra, unfortunately, is going to have to pay its way. At last count, I think we are owed over $800m by the Commonwealth Government - and I doubt that we will ever see it. Unfortunately, the tooth fairy no longer exists for the ACT. We have to go it alone financially. Times are tough and, because of that, whichever government is in power here will have to make hard economic decisions if it is to be effective.
This Government, the Kaine Government, has had the guts to make those hard economic decisions. Some of them have not been popular, but it has provided responsible government. Efficiencies have to be made. I do not really think it is an option to tax people out of existence. That is not, really, any alternative and it is, in fact, counterproductive.
In the seven months of Rosemary Follett's first Government both she and her Government took no hard decisions; they just drifted along. This Government, the Kaine Government, has taken hard decisions. It has been responsible. Regardless of what occurs in the February 1992 election - that is, assuming that we get that far - this Kaine Government will have left the ACT on a fundamentally sound
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