Page 2045 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Stevenson: What about the animal farewell Bill?
MR KAINE: These are just examples. This Government is not involved in any consultation with anybody and, to the extent that they are in discussion with them, it is a one-way discussion. They tell the Government, but the Government does not come back with the other half of this so-called dialogue.
Madam Speaker, this is no mini-budget. It is not a strategy. It is simply part of a piecemeal, nip and tuck approach to a major budgetary problem. It is an attempt to get additional revenue without saying what the money is needed for, what it is to be spent on, how big the problem is or who is going to pay it. We will not know until the Government trickles out little by little what the revenue increases are to be, and then we will get only a suspicion about who is going to pay the piper; we will not know where the services are going to be chopped, how many more beds are going to be taken out of our hospitals, how many teachers are going to be sacked from our schools. I talked about full anaesthetic and surgery yesterday. This is more of the same - a lot of surgery, a lot of anaesthetic; and over the next three or four months we might start to get a picture of the nature of the problem, how much it is going to cost, where the services are going to be cut and who is going to pay. But we should know now. Madam Speaker and Madam Treasurer, it is not good enough.
MS SZUTY (4.01): I wish to speak very briefly to the Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill.
Mr Kaine: Would you like my notes?
MS SZUTY: You have already delivered your speech, Mr Kaine. I think I will rely on mine. I wish to raise three issues. The first issue relates to the Chief Minister's description of budget priorities. I recall that when Mr Moore and I were speaking at length on the budget strategy last year we made the comment that the Government perhaps needs to look at savings in its lower order of priorities to a greater extent than it does in other areas of its budget. Ms Follett, in her closing remarks, said that she would take note of the comments that Mr Moore and I made in last year's debate and incorporate some of our ideas into this year's budget strategy. In re-reading Ms Follett's presentation speech last night, I found the following comment:
Savings will also need to be found in areas of lower priority to provide scope to meet emerging community needs within the constraint of achieving an overall reduction in recurrent outlays.
Ms Follett may not have paid terribly much heed to Mr Moore's comments and my comments last year. She may have come to this conclusion herself. Mr Moore and I are very pleased to see that the Chief Minister made that comment in her presentation speech.
I would also like to refer to the sliding scale for land tax which has been introduced in the Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill this year for the first time. This is an eminently sensible suggestion. It means that people who own a parcel of land with an unimproved value that exceeds $100,000 will pay more in land tax. This is in line with similar provisions in other States and applies the burden in our community where people can most afford it. I think it is a very sensible strategy which warrants applauding.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .