Page 4201 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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on the fact that the Commonwealth is reducing our money. We have known since 1989 that they were going to continually reduce our money and that the process was going to go on for a long time. The responsibility of government is to manage that change.
Mr Stevenson: The people knew it back in 1978.
MR KAINE: Certainly; but the responsibility of government is to manage that change. To continue as though we were sitting on the edge of the razor year after year, month after month demonstrates that the Government is not really in control of what is happening. The sort of management that I am talking about should not result in ad hoc decisions such as chopping 80 teachers in the one year without really any thought about what the alternatives are. It should not result in the modern Nero fiddling up on the fifth floor while our health system disintegrates around our ears. We have known for years that our health system had problems, and it is no better in 1993 than it was in 1989. What on earth is the Minister doing? Why is he not managing? Why is the Treasurer not managing?
The sort of management that I am talking about, Madam Speaker, entails the Minister for Urban Services not fiddling around the edges of ACTION with $1m or $2m a year. He has been told in a report that he should cut by $15m in one year. Being a Minister and being responsible for administration and resources means making decisions about those things, not taking hands off and saying, "Heavens, I cannot manage. Let it manage itself". It means, for example, the Treasurer or the Minister for Land making a decent estimate about what their expected revenue from land sales is. Last year they underestimated by $30m, and the indications are that they are going to underestimate again this year by a similar sum. What is wrong with the managers that they cannot get a better handle on it than this? The management that I am talking about means identifying waste and inefficiency in the system and eliminating it. If they were to identify all the waste and inefficiency in the system we would not be talking about firing 80 teachers. There is plenty of scope for eliminating waste and inefficiency and for identifying redundant functions that the Government can do away with and not perform. That gets back to the point that I am constantly making to the Chief Minister: There needs to be some restructuring of the way the Government does its business. Until it does that, it is not going to save any money.
An extension of that, Madam Speaker, is the question of the form and content of Government accounting and the reports that they submit - some of the matters that we are debating cognately. We need to have better financial management of the money that we have. We need proper financial accounting and accountability and better financial reporting. Most of the reports that are listed for cognate debate are incomprehensible. They tell you nothing. Until we get a process that allows us to follow through from the budget and measure performance against that budget and know at the end of the year what actually happened, those reports are meaningless.
The only other matter that I want to speak to specifically, Madam Speaker, is the Grants Commission relativities. The Government is failing because it is allowing the Commonwealth to get away with murder. Water supply is a classic example. When this city was built it was built in the knowledge that this was a dry area and there was going to be a problem with water. Yet the Commonwealth
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