Page 2397 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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Yet, during all that time, despite the present Chief Minister's assertions on the floor of the house today, she has consistently denied that there was any major problem. She has consistently told me that I was overstating the problem and acting as a scaremonger and, I repeat, that with a little bit of nipping and tucking it would all be good.
I notice in the introduction to this statement - I asked a question earlier - that the Chief Minister and Treasurer now says that the reduction in funds from the Commonwealth is not ephemeral. She could have been much more positive and said that it is real. It is something that she has denied for two years, but she could not even bring herself to say that the problem is real. She has to hide behind a euphemism and say that it is not ephemeral. We almost have a double negative there.
It is now common knowledge that in the year in which we took self-government the Commonwealth had overexpended against any reasonable expectation, to the tune of $135m in that year, and that was the order of magnitude of change in which we had to engage and which we had to confront, and we had two years of the transition period in which to confront it. Even after all this time, the best that the Treasurer and Chief Minister can say is that the problem is not ephemeral. Having said that it is not ephemeral, she then avoids the issue entirely.
This document says, in effect, Mr Speaker, that the things that the Alliance Government was putting into effect in the budget for 1991-92 were all pretty good and that we will reduce - - -
Mr Berry: Does it say that anywhere?
MR KAINE: She says:
... I have earlier announced a 25% cut in consultancy funds, a 10% reduction in travel expenditure and a 5% cut in vehicle spending.
These were decisions taken by me and my Cabinet when we were in government, to be put into effect this year. There is nothing there that we had not taken into account in our intentions for the budget that we would have brought down.
Mr Speaker, the only new thinking in here is the one per cent land tax. That is the only new initiative taken by the new Chief Minister. Having made that adjustment and having picked up all of the adjustments that we had proposed, she gets to the bottom line and she is still $17m short. What does this Chief Minister and Treasurer do? Having got to the point where all the easy decisions have been made and we have to confront the hard ones, the
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