Page 4200 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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MR KAINE (5.16): I would like at this stage to make some comments about clause 6 of the Appropriation Bill, with some reference to some of the matters that we are debating cognately, specifically some of the periodic reports that have been submitted over the last few months and the Grants Commission relativities paper. I think that members are well aware that when we vote on this Appropriation Bill, probably in only a few minutes' time now, we are appropriating to the Government a sum of $1.354 billion. It is a very substantial sum, and of course a couple of things need to be mentioned in connection with that.
First of all, that is not the total amount of money that the Government will be spending in the course of the next year. There is a great deal of money that is off budget and that does not appear in this figure of $1.354 billion. If you were to look through the budget papers and examine the transactions that occur - such as those in respect of the Housing Trust Fund, the Transport Trust Fund, the Borrowing and Investment Trust Fund and a series of other accounts - you would find that the total amount of money that the Government is dealing with in the course of the year is in fact closer to $2 billion than it is to $1 billion, so we need to get the thing in some sort of context.
There has been much talk about the Government's restraint, cutting budgets and the like. In fact, the budget total is $60m more than we were asked to appropriate this time last year. Every Minister gets up and says, "We are cutting. We are cutting. We are cutting". But if you go through the programs which we have taken individually this afternoon, there is in fact only one where there was indeed a cut, and that was Mr Connolly's Urban Services area in general - and $30m of that was in fact a reduction in expenditure on capital works. This is the sort of cut that the Government makes in order to balance its budget at a time when we need employment opportunities and we should be injecting money into the private sector rather than taking it out. I am not impressed by this constant harping, "We are cutting our budgetary expenditure". They are not; and the worst case, of course - - -
Mr Berry: Give us your version on health again.
MR KAINE: I hear little Sir Echo over there. The worst case is the health budget. The health budget went from an appropriated amount of $232m last year to an appropriated amount of $268m this year.
Mr Berry: And what about the income? Where did that go?
MR KAINE: The Minister always has reasons. Minister Fudge always has a good reason. He is right, to the extent that up until last year about $30m a year being spent in the health budget was never declared anywhere. Finally, we caught up with them this year, because we have been trying to figure out what the heck was going on. He has had to include it this year. But, when all of that is included, there is still a net increase in the budget over and above that by a very considerable sum. So let us stop this nonsense of talking about how we are cutting the budget.
Madam Speaker, we are talking about over $1.3 billion of appropriated money. That places a responsibility on the Government. The Government has to be accountable and it has to exercise some decent management, which it has not demonstrated up until now. The Chief Minister and Treasurer continually harps
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