Page 2922 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I withdraw it without troubling you for a ruling, and say that we never got an answer at all. We really did not. We constantly questioned the Alliance on their schools closure program without ever really getting an answer at all. Of course, the community, who were asking the question, "Why does the Alliance want to do this?", were the most outraged of all.
The fact is that I took advice from Treasury on what the costs might be. I set that advice against the bid that I had from the Minister - as I did, for instance, with the reopening of Ainslie Transfer Station. That was a good bid too. In discussion with Treasury officers, in discussion with me, in discussion between Treasury officers and Education officers, the figures that we needed in order to deliver on our new policy proposal were modified. I find it extraordinary that members opposite find that a strange process. It is really extraordinary of Mr Kaine, an erstwhile Treasurer, to get up and say that I should have accepted the first bid put to me. That is outrageous. I can only shudder at the thought of how Mr Kaine went about putting a budget together if he did not go through a similar process of modification of figures. You have to live within a budget. As I am sure Mr Kaine knows, that budget is reducing and is getting tighter year by year.
I also refer members back to Mrs Nolan's question. Her question to me was not, "What did Mr Willmot tell you?". That was not her question at all. Her question related to what my advice from Treasury was. For Mr Kaine to claim that Mr Willmot's bid is the only advice I had is simply a furphy, Madam Speaker. As I said during question time, the front page report in today's Canberra Times attempts to give the impression - shock, horror - that the budget allocation for the reopening of these two schools, Cook and Lyons, has only just come to light. Clearly, that is not the case. Madam Speaker, as I said, Budget Paper No. 2 of 1991-92 contains those costings. We have had that budget process; we have had the Estimates Committee's scrutiny of that process; and I am afraid there was not much to report. That is what it cost. That is irrefutable.
Madam Speaker, I would also like members to be aware that in all of these kinds of bids made by Ministers there is a process of scrutiny. No matter what the program is, no matter how strongly I or the Minister might feel about it or how determined we are to implement it, the process of studying the costs, and usually modifying the costs, will be gone through. You have here a government which is determined to have a responsible financial administration, not just "off the top of the head" figures. Treasury has confirmed with me today that on the full year effect of reopening the schools the guiding figure was the savings taken from the education budget at the time that the two schools closed. I think that is an entirely reasonable position.
As Mr Humphries, the former Minister, should know, in that savings proposal the figure was $520,000 in a full year. Mr Humphries nods. That is the figure. Thank you, Mr Humphries. The figures have been borne out. I fail to see what the great issue here is. As I said in question time, I went through some additions to that figure of $520,000. We came to the first year allocation of $657,600, subject to a little rounding. The full year effect from then on is $532,000. That is not a mystery. It has all been annotated in the budget papers and is there for any member to study.
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