Page 197 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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LABOR GOVERNMENT PROGRAM
Ministerial Statement and Paper
Debate resumed.
MR KAINE: The Labor Party also failed to tell us about their policy for legalising sex between 13- and 14-year-old children, irrespective of gender. When is that one going to come up? We as a community will need, therefore, to be vigilant to ensure that the Government's secret agenda is not implemented. I believe that a great deal of their secret agenda is unacceptable to this community; and clearly so do Labor, or they would have told the electorate about it before the election day.
Moving on to matters financial and economic: There is absolutely no doubt about the need to secure the Territory's future and its economic well-being. Ms Follett, as Treasurer, should be well aware of the difficult financial position that the ACT has had to face and that is not yet completely resolved - very largely, I admit, a direct outcome of past Federal government decisions. Her budgetary solution to difficult times, however, has been the traditional Labor solution - to try to spend her way out of it, including using up the entire $53m released by the Commonwealth Government last year.
But where are her plans to restructure the public sector, to get the hospital restructuring project completed on time and on financial target? Where is her plan to bring the Territory's financial affairs under control? Where is the Treasurer's commitment to these aims expressed? The answer to all those questions is "Nowhere". After all, if you do not understand the problem, it is impossible to articulate solutions; and, if you are part of the problem, it is even more difficult.
The financial reality is that the transition to a lower level of Commonwealth support has been only partially effected. Next year the Government faces a $35m budget shortfall before it starts, even without any new policy initiatives being put in place. The Treasurer has an increasing problem, largely of her own making. She has a reducing input of funds from the Commonwealth. She has excluded borrowings as an option. She has avoided all serious efforts to reduce public sector expenditure and has not even succeeded in the modest staff reduction target that she set herself during the current fiscal year. There is only one option left - raise taxes significantly. But the Treasurer will not come clean on that, just as she did not come clean in connection with her secret policy agenda during the election. If the Government is indeed genuine about ensuring economic stability and the viability of the Territory, then it will have to be honest and outline its financial plan, if it has one.
I referred to Labor's propensity for claiming credit for the initiatives of others. Let us all be clear about the successes that Ms Follett has claimed for herself. The transitional funds of $53m were released not because of any action on Labor's part, but rather because of what the then Federal Treasurer, Paul Keating, agreed had been "the ACT Government's commitment to microeconomic reform and restructuring". That was not the Labor Government that Mr Keating was talking about. That was the Alliance Government's commitment to reduction in expenditure, to reducing the size of the public sector and to further promoting incentives for private sector employment. Even Mr Keating thinks I am a pretty good finance manager, but he could not say the same thing about the present Treasurer.
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