Page 2527 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 23 August 1994
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coming back and saying, "Gee whiz! I apologise. I made a mistake. That was wrong and I would like to correct it". I wonder which predictions in the budget speech for 1994-95 are going to be proved to be just as incapable of implementation. For example, under the heading of economic progress, the Chief Minister said:
Construction activity, other than for housing, showed good recovery during 1993-94 and is forecast to grow at a healthy rate during 1994-95.
That statement was made only a very short time ago. I wonder whether that prediction is going to be sustained.
Again in terms of our economic progress, private business is strong, we are told. That is not the message that I get from our private sector. Private business is not strong. It is hanging on by its fingernails and is likely to fall off the cliff any day. We are told that industries such as high technology and telecommunications are also growth industries. We know that they are growth industries; but what does that mean for the budget? We get these platitudes, these statements that do not mean anything, scattered through the documents. If they did mean anything, we would be in a lot better position than we are in today. So there are problems about these predictions that the Government makes. It never substantiates them. They never come to fruition.
The second problem is the question of verifying the validity of our estimates. Year after year, the Government comes forward and gives us its Appropriation Bill, and we are asked to appropriate these sums of money. We know that their estimates are not very close to the mark sometimes. But, in the last two years, not only have they not been very close to the mark; they have gone right off the planet. For example, last year, in explaining her budget, the Chief Minister said that the outcome of the 1992-93 budget met some of her aims handsomely. She said:
An overall deficit of $64m estimated at budget time last year was held to only $1.5m. A strong recurrent surplus of $59m funded nearly all the capital deficit, thus removing the need to borrow.
What she was saying was that, a year before, we appropriated $59m that she did not need. That is what it boils down to. That was one year ago. We were told a similar thing in this year's budget speech, namely:
The deficit on the Consolidated Fund is contained to $64.5m. This will be met with a very modest borrowing program of $36m. Internal funding will cover the remaining deficit. The higher than expected receipts in 1994-95 compared to the forward estimates have been used to reduce borrowings.
Year after year, revenues far exceed what we are told at the beginning of the year they are going to be. In one case, in particular, there was a $30m underspend compared to what the Government told us they wanted to spend. Year after year, the Chief Minister and Treasurer comes back and says, "Aren't we good managers? We did not spend $30m that
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