Page 3969 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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She found that very readily - land tax, petrol tax, rates. She very soon found that, but then she went overboard. Not only did she recover the $15m that she needed to balance the budget this year. Then she thought, "Gee, I have not gone far enough yet, so we will reduce expenditure on capital works by $30m as well". What on earth is the point of reducing expenditure on capital works to that tune?
Mr Connolly: Spend more, spend more.
MR KAINE: No. I am not saying, "Spend more, spend more", Mr Connolly. You are not listening to what I am saying. What I am saying is, "Spend what you have better". That is what I am saying to you. Do not spend more. In fact, if necessary, spend less, but do it right. I hope that Mr Wood is listening to this because, coming to the question of spending the money right, he had to save $3m. He has a budget of what - $220m?
Mr Wood: In round figures $200m.
MR KAINE: Say $200m. But only 60 per cent of that has to do with salaries, approximately.
Mr Wood: Sixty per cent? No. Much more than that.
MR KAINE: About 60 per cent. So he did not even look at 40 per cent of the budget. He just said, "Let us chop the $3m out of the salary bit. That makes it easy. We get rid of 80-odd teachers and that solves the problem". What about the other 40 per cent that is spent on things that are not salary related? Why could you not have taken $3m out of that? That is the sort of thing that I am suggesting. I have mentioned to the Chief Minister already, and she has given me an undertaking which I hope that she is honouring, that it costs us $1,000 a day for public servants to drive publicly owned motor vehicles home every night. That is $250,000 a year. That goes a long way to some teachers' salaries. All you have to do is to stop the private use of publicly owned motor vehicles and you have $250,000. That is just one small thing that I can think of.
I would like the Government to be a bit more selective about what it does with the money. I am not saying, "Spend more". Mr Connolly is dead wrong. I have never said that. I am saying, "Spend what you have smarter, and do not let your health budget blow out to the tune of $1m a month". After all the years that Mr Berry has sat over there and talked about budget control, even in this year his budget is still blowing out to the tune of $1m a month. At the end of the year it will be $12m this year. It is not $8m. He is going to exceed by any measure the unfortunate experience that Mr Humphries had when - - -
Mr Berry: No, that you had, because you were the Treasurer.
MR KAINE: I was the Treasurer, but he was the Minister for Health. Between the pair of us we could not handle it, but we put in place the steps to handle it and you screwed it up, Minister. You screwed it up and you are still doing it. We are not going forward; we are going backwards. I would like to see the Government exercising some real management of its resources.
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