Page 2441 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 1993
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MR KAINE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Mr Connolly, one year ago, said, "I need $12m for capital expenditure for my bus service". He did not spend it. If he did not need it, why did he ask for it? Now he is trying to make a virtue out of the fact that, having got an appropriation of $12m from this Assembly, he did not spend it, and he and the Treasurer say, "Aren't we great managers". Nobody is asking what the $12m was supposed to be spent on, and what service it was supposed to provide for the public that is now not being provided.
This virtuous management, as a result of some fortuitous circumstances whereby they got $30m revenue more than they could even estimate - so much for their forward estimating - underspent $30m that was appropriated for specific purposes that this Government identified. The Opposition did not identify them; the Government did. The Chief Minister then says, "Gee whiz, we now have in reserves $40m that we did not need. We can carry that forward into next year". Let us have some of the $40m spent on the dementia sufferers and their carers. If we have this much surplus money, if the Government have managed their budget so well that we have all this money, the budget gap is gone, so let us spend some of it on useful capital works. Let us not only have the hospice for $3m - - -
Mr Connolly: Spend it all this year and have nothing next year.
MR KAINE: You spent it all last year. The year before you blew the lot - $80m worth of reserve money in one year.
Mr Connolly: That is why you deliver deficits and we deliver surpluses.
MR KAINE: Madam Speaker, Mr Connolly is obviously very sensitive about this. He does not want to hear what I have to say. He just tries to talk me down.
Mr Lamont: He is not half as sensitive as you are.
MR KAINE: Oh, Mr Lamont is back. Now he can tell me whether four years is not long enough to deal with the problems of the dementia patients.
Mr Lamont: You did absolutely nothing in 18 months, Mr Kaine, and you were the Chief Minister.
MR KAINE: I can tell you a few things that we did. We started the infrastructural change process that you have dropped the ball on, Mr Lamont. We made the decisions about closing the Royal Canberra Hospital. Now Mr Berry says what a great job we did in closing the Royal Canberra Hospital. You did not want to do it in 1989 or 1990; now it is a great thing. But we made that decision, I would remind you, Mr Lamont, not the Labor Government, and the economic benefits that flow from that decision are still carrying the Labor Government along on its crest. This Government has not made a single decision of that order of magnitude since it gained office - not one. If they have, I would like you to tell me where it is, Mr Lamont, through you, Madam Speaker.
I think it is interesting that Ms Ellis has to go through this process to get her Government to take notice of a report which her committee prepared and which has been before the Government for eight months. I repeat that it is a follow-up to a very similar report that was tabled in October 1989 from a committee chaired by Mr Wood. It is no wonder that Ms Ellis put the motion on the notice paper.
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