Page 4188 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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Mr Wood: It is 80. You are wrong there too, you see.
MR KAINE: Eighty. Whatever it is. I thought it was 82, but I concede my mistake. When he says to his advisers, "Where can we take these 80 teachers from", they are going to say, "Minister, do you mean part-time teachers or full-time teachers? Do you mean teachers who work only one hour a week, or do you mean teachers who work 36 hours a week? Do you mean male teachers or female teachers? Do you mean college teachers, secondary school teachers, or primary school teachers?". Those are the very questions that the officials are going to be putting to him so that they know what to do.
What we are saying to him is that, when they say that, when they ask those questions, his answer is, "I am not permitted to do what you are proposing, because the Assembly has forbidden it". It is as simple as that. Whatever you intended to do you will not be permitted to do once this amendment is passed. If the Government is going to get all twitchy about the fact that we are not being so specific as to say, "You cannot get rid of that teacher or that one", why have they not specified which 80 teachers they are going to get rid of? Their appropriation is so woolly that we should not approve it at all, if the Minister is so unclear as to where the teachers are going to come from.
Mr Wood: I am clear.
MR KAINE: You obviously are not clear. You have not been able to explain it to this Assembly. You have not been able to explain it to the teachers union. I do not believe that you do know. The Chief Minister said this morning that it was not teachers; it was school based staff. That is a total contradiction of everything that you have said, Minister. Which of you is right? Is it going to be teachers, or is it going to be school based staff? Or have you changed your mind since you tabled the budget in the first place? You do not know. You cannot answer the question. So do not play this funny game of getting up and saying, "The Opposition are woolly; they do not know what they mean". We know exactly what we mean, and the interesting thing is that so do you. You know exactly what we mean.
Mr Wood: You might know what you want, but you cannot write it down. That is the trouble.
MR KAINE: You cannot write down where you are going to take the 80 teachers from, can you? If you can, do it now, and we will make our amendment very specific. You tell us where you are going to take the 80 teachers from and we will give you a specific amendment that says that you cannot do it, which is what we are trying to do now.
These people play funny games. Mr Connolly had the effrontery to get up and talk about arrogance. This is the ultimate in arrogance. You know exactly what we mean. We are expressing our amendment in exactly the same terms that you have used in putting your budget forward. If you do not understand what we are saying, you do not understand your own budget. This would not be the first time I have said that, because I do not think you do understand your budget; but we will deal with that in a more general sense later. Everybody sitting in this room knows exactly what we mean, including the members of the Government, and I suggest that they support the amendment, Madam Speaker.
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