Page 1821 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 June 1993
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MR KAINE: Mr Wood wants to debate me one to one, Madam Speaker. He will get his chance, I am sure. If you look at last year's Supply Bill for the whole education budget - the whole education budget covers the Institute of Technology, government and non-government schooling and higher education and training - the provision was $144m. This year it is $165m. Can you explain to me how a five-month budget for the Education Department can be $165m? That means that your total annual budget is going to have to be about $320m.
Mr Connolly: On the assumption that it is pro rata.
MR KAINE: Why do you not tell us that it is not pro rata? Why do you not explain to us why you need $165m in the first five months? As always, you do not. You try to obfuscate the issues, do not tell us a thing, just give us a bottom line figure of $643m, and you think we are mugs enough to buy it without asking you a question. Mr Wood, you have your chance. You explain to me why, with very little capital works program for the Education Department - very little, like Health; his is only $800,000, yours is a little bit more, I have to concede - your recurrent budget for the first five months of the year is $165m, or darn close to that.
Mr Wood: Pro rata, Mr Kaine? Check your dates.
MR KAINE: If it is pro rata, and you work it out on the basis of a full year, it is over $320m.
Mr Wood: And you know that that ain't right, don't you?
MR KAINE: I do know that it is not right, and I would like you to tell me why you want $165m for five months' worth of expenditure. That is your job. I am asking the questions. It is your job to answer them.
If we look at the individual items there, some of them seem to have gone right out of whack. As usual, the Government does not give us any explanation, and that is the point I am making. It may well be right that Mr Wood needs $165m for five months' worth of education; but, if he needs it, why does he not tell us why? This is an absurdity, unless he has some damn good reasons. If you look at the bottom line of this document, no matter how you calculate the expected budget for this coming year, $643m is over half what we would expect the budget to be, yet it is supposed to be for only a five-month period. Madam Speaker, I think I have made my point. I went through this last year.
Mr Lamont: Equally tediously, I might add.
MR KAINE: I challenged the Chief Minister to explain to me how she calculated it. She did not answer the questions last year, Mr Lamont. Go and read the Hansard and see what an unsatisfactory response we got last year. I suspect that you cannot answer it this year, yet you have the effrontery to put that sort of document before us and say, "Just give us $643m". If you take the noughts off the end, $643m does not sound much, does it? I would like the Government to tell us why they need this amount of money. I do not think they should assume that this year, given that we gave them a chance last year and they did not come to the party, they are necessarily going to get that amount of money in their Supply Bill without explaining it to us most satisfactorily and comprehensively - - -
Mr Connolly: Ooh! You are going to block supply.
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