Page 3543 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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It has deservedly received a completely negative response from everyone who has analysed it.
Mr Connolly: That is not exactly what we see.
MR KAINE: I do not know who you are listening to. We need to go no further than the Canberra Times editorial of 18 September 1991 to get the flavour of the response.
Mr Connolly: They reckon it was so good that they said it was an election budget.
MR KAINE: I will come back to that later, Mr Connolly. Let me review some specific issues raised by this Clayton's budget. So far as fundamental issues and long-term strategies are concerned, it is patently obvious that this Government has no interest in them. I have already dealt at length with that matter. I notice, incidentally, that the Chief Minister and Treasurer does not want to hear my response to this budget. She cannot stay in the chamber to hear what is going on.
Mr Acting Speaker, I have said that the Government has focused on short-term issues and that even their short-term objectives cannot be achieved. I will deal with a couple of specifics. To begin, let us together flesh out the Government's approach to the health budget. The managers of the health delivery system have been given the task of maintaining health services at existing levels and standards with a reduction in funding of about 8 per cent.
It is well known to everybody here that financial management of health budgets has been a major problem for government over several years. Performance in controlling programs has been appalling. Mr Berry found this out, to his embarrassment, in 1989, with a budget blow-out becoming obvious in the first quarter of the fiscal year. Mr Humphries inherited the problem.
But once the magnitude of the problem became clear, through the Enfield inquiry, instituted, incidentally, by the Alliance Government, corrective action was initiated to put adequate management systems in place and to enhance financial management generally. Now, these measures are, no doubt, taking effect and Mr Berry could be - could be - a beneficiary; but miracles are not worked overnight. It is my belief that it will take some months for the Alliance Government's measures to become 100 per cent effective.
To expect the new management to deliver the goods with a massive 8 per cent reduction in funding is, in my view - this is a professional, not a political, view - asking too much. I would estimate that around February 1992, which is election time incidentally, Mr Berry will again be explaining excess expenditure - I will not call it a budget blow-out - because this Government has asked for too much.
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