Page 2087 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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last year's budget that was efficient. They came down to a single system that delivers the same service. Why would you have two systems that deliver the same service, unless it was just a sop to what they see as their electoral base? That is exactly what it is - a simple sop. The group that talks about Labor giving a sop to the unions - and there is some truth in that - gives exactly the same sop to what they see as their electoral base when talking about this business of police road rescue.
The one that really tops them off is this: "We will cap rates in our first year of office". Woop, woop! Big deal! You would cap them in the first year of office and then double them in the second year of office. As if that is going to trick anybody! The Canberra community is just a tad wiser than that; just a touch wiser than that. I suggest that you provide your full picture. What are you going to do over three years if you get into government? Are you really going to restrict them or not? We find that a little bit difficult to deal with.
Then you deal with ACTION, and you talk about benchmarking once again in dealing with ACTION. What does benchmarking mean? It means the lowest common denominator. That is what you are going to do. You are going to have a bus service that will be equivalent to the lowest common denominator in the rest of Australia. Then you go on to Comcare. This is the first sensible suggestion in your budget speech. We make an incredible expenditure on Comcare. For some reason our Labor Government feels tied to Comcare. Following our estimates process last year it is quite obvious that our expenditure to Comcare is out of all proportion to what we get from it when compared with what we could get from private industry. That, I think, is the first reasonable and sensible suggestion. I think that the Labor Government could well take notice of that and allow government departments to get their Comcare equipment from wherever; it could allow the departments to buy that kind of insurance from wherever and allow competition in that area.
The Leader of the Opposition then went on to talk about school based funding. There was a little bit of noise at the time and we still have not got the paper from Mrs Carnell. She indicated from the gallery, from outside the Assembly, that she would provide it to members, and I am still waiting for it. My understanding is that she talked about retaining school based funding on a per capita basis. I want to look at what she means by that and how that is going to be used to enhance education. If you are going to use a per capita basis, how are you going to compare it with what children have available to them in the non-government sector, to ensure social justice, to ensure that, no matter what kind of wealth a parent has, a child has the opportunity to have an equivalent education? That is the fundamental thing about government education that has to be retained. I am not yet convinced that the Liberal policy, as presented by Mrs Carnell, will do that. We will give her room to expand on that because it may well have an appropriate safety net in it; and, if it does have a safety net, you have to account for what it is going to cost.
What we are talking about is sound management and the issues that Mrs Carnell has raised in her alternative budget. Within the memories of some of us sitting here is the very speech that Mr Kaine referred to before, in which he presented some alternative ideas to a budget. Within a day or so of that budget passing Mr Kaine went into
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