Page 2049 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 June 1993
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increase of roughly 8.7 per cent. Mr Kaine's one and only budget increased rates by twice as much as I propose to do. Mr Kaine increased the land tax by 33 per cent, from 0.75 per cent to one per cent. I do not think that Mr Kaine can claim to be quite the magnanimous Treasurer that he would now like to paint himself as. Also in Mr Kaine's budget he indulged - and I use the word advisedly - in new borrowings of $85.6m. Just to round out the picture, not only did Mr Kaine preside over an increase in the public service but he also, at the end of that budget year, came out with a deficit of $8.8m. So I would say to Mrs Carnell, in respect of her reference to the myth of balanced budgets, that the only time a balanced budget was not achieved on the recurrent side was when Mr Kaine was Treasurer.
Madam Speaker, I would also like to point to the fact that successive budget years have seen reductions in expenditure across the range of ACT agencies, to the point where we have now brought the initial Grants Commission's assessment of a 12 per cent above average expenditure down to 4.5 per cent. I think that is a considerable achievement in only four years. But there was one year which was an exception to that downward trend, and that was the year of the Alliance Government, 1990-91, when the level of above standard expenditure actually increased. That is Mr Kaine's record; that is the Liberals' record. To hear them talk today you would never believe that they could make such hypocritical comments as we have heard today. I would not have believed it.
Madam Speaker, the Liberals ought to get their act together and put up just one credible spokesperson on Treasury matters. I do not care which one it is. We saw Mr Kaine and Mrs Carnell both on television last night talking about this matter. Both spoke today. In my personal opinion Mr Kaine was by far the better. I do not think Mrs Carnell added a great deal to the debate. Mr Kaine was also heard to respond to me on the ABC radio program on Tuesday. On that occasion Mr Kaine did make a few errors, and he has repeated some of them today. On the radio program he said that during his term as Treasurer he added $80m to reserves. That is just not so.
Mr Kaine: No, I did not; I said $25m.
MS FOLLETT: I think you did. Madam Speaker, on Tuesday the figure Mr Kaine used was $80m; today he has brought it down somewhat. There is no way in the world that Mr Kaine could have put together that quantity in reserves, especially when you bear in mind that he actually came out with a budget deficit. I think that what Mr Kaine was referring to - and he had his figures mixed up a bit, but not as much as Mrs Carnell - was the $53m in transitional funding which became available from the Commonwealth in the 1991-92 budget. It did not come from Mr Kaine; it came from the Commonwealth. They were not Mr Kaine's reserves at all and that money was not available to him. Madam Speaker, in his very confused interview, I think Mr Kaine was referring to that $53m of transitional funding, and I think that is what he was referring to today.
Madam Speaker, I would like to refresh members' memories again on the use of that money. That $53m was not got rid of, as Mr Kaine seemed to imply. In fact, of that $53m - and, as I recall, this was in my budget speech at the time - $37m was used to fund the capital budget to achieve savings in debt servicing.
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