Page 3073 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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Again the ideological approach occurs in connection with the Griffin Centre replacement. Mrs Grassby says:
It appears to me that this whole project owed far more to Mr Kaine's desire ... to sell the Griffin Centre site for use with adjacent land as a large private sector development.
That was never proposed by the Alliance Government. It was always envisaged that a new community centre would be built - does anybody suggest that the people in Civic Centre are not entitled to one? - and that the existing Griffin Centre then be redeveloped, quite probably as part of an enlarged community centre. There is no suggestion on my part, and certainly no desire, as quoted by Mrs Grassby, to sell it to the private sector. So, here we have this ideological approach.
On the question of the rationalisation of TAFE, we suggested that the rationalisation of the TAFE campuses should continue, as was always intended. It was part of a long-term program to put the TAFE system onto a reasonable basis. This was started when the Labor Government was in office. But now Mrs Grassby says that we should have a full cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the maximum benefit is returned to the TAFE users. I thought that the whole TAFE rationalisation program, started under the Labor Government and continued under the Alliance Government, and which we are recommending should now continue, was the result of a proper economic analysis. Perhaps Mrs Grassby and the Labor Party opposite can explain why they embarked on the program in the first place if it was not a rational approach. Of course it was on the basis of a rational approach, and we fully support that.
"It is incumbent", Mrs Grassby says, "on the Liberal and Residents Rally members of the committee ..."; not the other members of the committee, but the Liberal and Residents Rally members. Here we have this distinction between the white banner of the Labor Party on the one side and the presumably blotched escutcheon of the Liberals and the Rally members on the other. Why that has to be intruded into the argument I do not know. She suggests that we should demonstrate how we would pay for our recommendations. She says that we have adopted a "buy now, pay later" mentality.
When you embark upon projects in your capital works program that have a future pay-off, that give you a reduction in your recurrent budget in future years or that in themselves generate revenue, that is a very responsible way to go with your capital projects, and that is what we are recommending. We are saying that these particular projects should be put back into the program because they have an economic and financial pay-off. Where do you get this "buy now, pay later" mentality? You do legitimately borrow for capital projects of the kind that give you a future pay-off. That is the basis of your borrowing.
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