Page 2415 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (4.10), in reply: I will briefly round off the debate. I would like to thank members for their contributions to this debate which, when you sweep aside the rhetoric, I think were constructively meant. I hope they were. I can only conclude, Mr Speaker, that the people opposite must forever remember the Labor Party in their prayers for having got them out of an impossible government situation. If you look at some of the contradictions that have been put forward in the debate this afternoon you will see that it is quite impossible for a group such as we have opposite to ever attempt to govern.
Mr Speaker, what have we heard on the question of the budget strategy statement? You heard Mr Kaine saying that he would not have done it at all; that there is no point in consulting; that it is a waste of time to ask people what they think; and that even when they tell you there is no point in listening to them. That is the Trevor Kaine school on consultancy - tell them nothing. On the other hand, Mr Speaker, Mr Collaery claimed the statement as his own; it is the budget strategy statement that he would have made had he remained in government. I find that simply extraordinary but not untypical of members opposite.
There is another fairly fundamental difference of opinion here. Mr Kaine is urging on me his slash and burn techniques of budget management - close things down; take what he calls all the hard decisions. On the other hand, Mr Collaery is urging us to borrow our way out of budget difficulties - Bankcard Bernard, as he has been dubbed over here - in order to make good on his own $6m promises on new policy proposals. Again I fail to see how the difference between the previous Chief Minister and the previous Deputy Chief Minister could ever have been resolved except by their going out of government. As I say, they ought to be grateful.
Mr Speaker, Mr Duby raised a few interesting issues, mainly relating to his own Government's draft capital works budget. He called into question some of the things which were in fact included in his own draft capital works budget. So, either he has not read his own draft capital works budget or else he disagreed entirely with what eventually went forward in that draft. He also drew attention, Mr Speaker, to the swimming pool at Tuggeranong and implied that what was intended to be provided by the Labor Government was not of a suitable national standard. That is quite untrue. The swimming facility that we are planning to build there will meet all of the requirements, but we will meet them at a slightly reduced cost from the very inflated figure that the previous Government had put forward.
Mr Speaker, the capital works budget, which a number of members alluded to, has gone to the appropriate Assembly committee for detailed scrutiny, and I expect that the Assembly will be hearing from that committee in due course. So, there are a number of issues in there that there is a further opportunity to debate.
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