Page 3218 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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MADAM SPEAKER: Order! I believe that Mr Kaine has the floor. Proceed, Mr Kaine.
MR KAINE: Just listen patiently and you will hear. Madam Speaker, things change but things remain the same. I was looking at statements made by the Chief Minister and me back in July 1989 and it was almost like reading the budget papers and the budget response today. I was talking about what the Follett Government had failed to do in 1989 - it has failed to do it since - and that is to approach the basic restructuring that must be undertaken so that this place can run at a reasonable price, and so that we can maintain a level of taxation that people can afford. I said on 27 July 1989:
These real issues will not go away. They will be there waiting next year and the year after, and must eventually be confronted. Their magnitude may well be greater then than now.
That was four years ago. The problems are still there. The only restructuring that was undertaken was during the year of the Alliance Government, and nothing - - -
Mr Connolly: Restructuring? Look at the ACTION budget. It went berserk.
MR KAINE: We began a program of restructuring which this Government has done nothing but dismantle ever since. Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not intend to pursue ACTION today; others have taken up that issue. I notice that the Canberra Times now, after four years, has started to make the very same points. In fact, if you read the article in the paper today, a great deal of that was what I said, as Treasurer, three years ago. The Government did not listen then, and it will not listen now. It will always take the easy option.
That brings me to my first point, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to talk about the mythology associated with this budget, because there is a great deal of it. The first myth is that this was a tough budget. The word "tough" is used three times at least on page 1 of the Chief Minister's speech. This budget was a pushover. The Chief Minister started talking, after the Premiers Conference, about the $74m that the Commonwealth had taken away from it - this huge budget gap. What happened when the time came? They ended up, by pure bad management last year, underspending or getting more revenue to the extent of $60m, and that allowed the Chief Minister to create, as she said, $40m worth of reserves. Where did the $40m of reserves go? Straight into this budget. Then she borrowed the other $34m to top it up, and, hey presto, the big hole went away. Where was the difficulty?
I want to pursue that point a little further because the next myth is the myth of cutting expenditure. Members opposite have done nothing but talk about cutting expenditure. The budget papers are full of it. But let us look at some figures. Let us look at the health budget. The amount appropriated one year ago by this Assembly for health was $232m. This year they are appropriating $268m. If somebody can produce sums that show me that a $34m increase in the budget represents a reduction in expenditure, I would love to see them. Let us analyse this increase from $232m, because I think the Minister has something to answer for. The Minister, at the end of the last fiscal year, produced an accounting for his last year's operations. He said that, against the approximately $231m appropriated, he ended up spending $238m, in round figures. In other words, he overspent by about $8m.
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