Page 3546 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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The PSU has already expressed concern based on Ms Follett's 250 figure. Whether the real targeted reduction of 520 is achievable will depend, of course, on the reaction of the unions to the revelation of this real figure. The likelihood of achieving the expected outcome, even if it weathers the unions' reactions, is very low because of the difficulties of identifying those to go, seeking their acceptance of redundancy packages, and physically processing the resulting applicants - or are they to be pressed volunteers?
I said earlier that this budget exhibits a distorted, ideologically-based set of priorities. By way of example, I need go no further than the decision to set aside earlier assurances to three private schools and to reduce their funding by $520,000. This is a massive reduction in funding for those three educational institutions and will impose an inequitable burden on the parents and managers, since they have had no prior warning, no consultation, about which this Government talks so loudly. There being no justification for the reduction from the Government, it is open to the interpretation, regrettably, that this is a response to the pro-public school, anti-private school lobby.
It should cause the alarm bells to ring for other so-called wealthy private schools, including the Catholic schools system. It is ironic, even if coincidental, that the $520,000 a year saved by this measure is very nearly equal to the $532,000 a year required to keep the Cook and Lyons primary schools open for a total student body of only 165 children. Now, there is some social justice for you! Mr Acting Speaker, here we have a Minister pushing the anti-private school lobby. He ought to be ashamed of himself.
The proposed land tax is another example. It is clearly unacceptable to the Labor Party ideologues that the hundreds of "wealthy" small capitalists who own a house or two by way of a hedge against inflation, or even as a form of superannuation, should get off scot-free with their profits. It is even acknowledged that much, if not all, of the tax will be passed on to tenants in the end. On the other hand, the Government's proposal would establish a special class of protected tenants, and a protected landlord; that is, some Housing Trust tenants and the Housing Trust.
Mr Connolly: Rubbish!
MR KAINE: It is not rubbish; it is fact. Inevitably, Housing Trust rentals will adjust to market rates for those tenants to whom full market rates apply; but the proceeds would, under the Government's proposal, become a windfall profit for the Trust. Subsidised Housing Trust tenants would be protected from the increases, but less fortunate low-income tenants in private rental situations would not. Is this more social justice, or has this one, too, simply not been thought through, like the rest of the budget?
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