Page 3564 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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MS FOLLETT: That is right. As Mr Jensen points out, the Bill has to get to the Estimates Committee today. It is also a fact that other members will have an opportunity to speak at the detail stage of the consideration of this Bill. So, any member who is not here - and there are many of them - and who wishes to take up particular issues will have an opportunity later on to do so.
Mr Acting Speaker, I will respond very briefly because, in fact, there is not a great deal to respond to. Mr Kaine confined his remarks pretty much to a personal attack upon me, which I thought frankly was beneath his dignity and was certainly not an appropriate course of action to take on a matter as important as the budget. Nevertheless, there were a couple of points that Mr Kaine made that ought to be responded to.
The first was Mr Kaine's pretension to some knowledge and some activity in the field of social justice. I find that an absolutely appallingly cynical attempt by him to paint himself and his own Government as a social justice government. The fact is that the Government which Mr Kaine presided over, and in which he was accommodated throughout by the Residents Rally and the No Self Government, Independent, Hare-Clark Independence, Duby and Maher team, sought initially to close 25 government schools, to close a hospital and to undertake many other activities that quite clearly reduced social justice in our community, to the benefit of private interests in the community. I just express my own extreme cynicism about Mr Kaine's approach to social justice.
Mr Kaine also recommended that the budget should include what he referred to as a modest program of borrowing. Mr Acting Speaker, I reiterate what I said initially, and that is that a balanced budget without resorting to new borrowings, I believe, is the most responsible course of action at the moment. This is not a good time to be borrowing. The ACT, I think, has never had less money available to it than it has in this budget. To borrow in order to make ends meet would be a very poor outcome for the community in future years.
Mr Kaine also accused me of having cleaned out all of the reserves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Mr Kaine: Is there some more left? Would you tell me where it is? I will need it next year.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Kaine has asked whether I could tell him where they are and, indeed, I can tell him where some of them are. Mr Acting Speaker, it is a fact that there are still considerable reserves held. Part of those reserves relates to money made available upon self-government. I believe that there is still some $31m in reserves which has not been touched and, I do not believe, ought to be touched.
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