Page 2270 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 1993
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While the Chief Minister is claiming to be such a good manager in that she failed to spend $40m of appropriated funds, she also claims that she is a good manager because her revenues were more than she thought they would be. This is not from good management either; these are purely fortuitous circumstances. I quote the Chief Minister:
Recurrent revenues in the Consolidated Fund were $12m ... above budget estimates, primarily due to higher than expected receipts from stamp duties on shares and marketable securities and conveyancing.
That was something that she could not foresee; things went better than she expected. She has $12m and she claims that this is from good management. All I can say is, "Heaven help us if we are going to continue to be managed this well". We did not spend $40m that we budgeted for. Somebody did not get $40m worth of services. We got $12m in the Consolidated Fund or in recurrent revenues but also in the capital fund we got $19m more than we budgeted for. This again is good management created by "higher than expected returns from commutations of land rent and the timing of land sales and higher auction prices compared to budget estimates"! In other words, we screwed up the budget by $20m on the capital side. I repeat, "If this is good management, heaven help us".
It is no wonder that we are in such a sorry state with our budget. It is no wonder that when the Chief Minister goes to the Premiers Conference and the Federal Government and holds her hand out and says, "Give me more money", they say, "Go away". She is managing so poorly that I would not give her 10c. Madam Speaker, I am talking about her own words here. She makes this statement on page 4 of her speech:
Reserves in the Consolidated Fund available to meet future years' expenditure are $40m greater than estimated at budget time.
So what we did was take some of the money that should have been spent this year, stick it in a piggy bank and call it a reserve so that we can use it as a slush fund in future years - not necessarily because we needed it but because it happened to be there. So we will stick it in a slush fund and we will call it a reserve. But what the Chief Minister did not tell us, Madam Speaker, so that we could get some sense of whether this was an achievement or not, was: How much money did she bring into fiscal 1991-92 a year ago by way of reserves? Was that $40m? If it was, you have not moved one inch in any direction.
Ms Follett: It is more than that. The $40m is just this year.
MR KAINE: You claim that this is good management. You tell me how much you brought into your budget last year as reserves. These in fact are not reserves. If you call them what they really are, they are provisions, not reserves. They are two different things. The Chief Minister and Treasurer would not understand the difference. If you brought $40m or anything close to it into your budget last year, to claim $40m going out of the year is a fictitious claim, and I am sure that you know it as well as I do. So here we have just three statements alone from the Chief Minister - a demonstration that she is not managing her budget at all. It is managing itself. She got $30m-odd more in revenue than she thought she was going to get, and $40m that she budgeted for that she could not spend. This is good management? I ask you.
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