Page 3949 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 October 1991
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MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (3.57): Mr Collaery accused us of being mauvaise foi. I am not quite sure what that means and I was therefore not sure whether I should call a point of order - but I will bet that he is more mauvaise foi than we are.
Mr Collaery has returned to being all things to all people. He deserves to be right where he is: On the crossbenches, being all things to all people and promising them all sorts of things such as those which he cited from his generous wish list. I am sure that he would promise them to everybody who knocked on his front door. Of course, we knew, as soon as we took over government, that very few of those promises could be met. They were merely hollow promises meant to satisfy prospective constituents out there - promises which would never have been delivered.
I must say that, when Mr Kaine was making his speech, I thought it was one of his worst attempts. In particular, I was surprised that he even bothered to raise the elite schools funding issue, because it seemed that he took so long to get to his feet about the issue in this house. It was really Dennis Stevenson that shocked him into some sort of activity on the subject. That is pretty much an indictment of the Liberal Party on that score.
In relation to the police, I was reminded of a comment Mr Kaine made in relation to the police budget on 8 August 1990. He was reported in the Canberra Times as having said:
The police force will be like any other element of the community and if we have to make cuts they will have to bear their share.
Is it not amazing - the big turnaround?
Mr Kaine: And I still agree with that. It is not the cuts that I object to; it is the way that you did it.
MR BERRY: Oh dear! We probably did it in much the same way as you had intended - we reduced their budget. That is the truth of the matter.
In what I would describe as a "loyal yawn", following Mr Kaine's speech, Mr Humphries made the point about how much our taking office would cost us. Labor is not frightened of making the hard decisions. We knew that government in the Territory needed to be protected. The Alliance had fallen apart. We knew of the risks, and we took them on because we knew that there needed to be good government in the Territory - and that is what we will provide. This budget has a disciplined approach to financial management, unlike that of the former Government. It will make real progress to providing a fair and just community. It is not something that will happen over the next year; it will take some time.
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