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None . . Page.. 477 ..

We have large sums of money which the former Government intended to spend, and, in fact, in some cases has spent, without it being in the budget. One must ask: What is the function of the appropriation business of this Assembly? We appropriate money; but the Government seeks to spend it any way it likes, regardless of whether it has been appropriated or not.

I go back to the borrowing. The former Chief Minister, as I said, made a great song and dance about not borrowing. In 1994-95 she budgeted to borrow $36.3m. The evidence, even the quarterly report from the Treasurer, now suggests that that is more likely to be $100m to $107m, not $36m. Borrowing of $100m to $107m is necessary to cover the ineptitude of the former Government in this current fiscal year that is not over yet. So, where is the good management? I do not see any good management. There is the further exhaustion of reserves that I spoke about. This budget, when brought down last year, spoke about using $28m, in round figures, of reserve money. In fact, as of the end of March, the projection was $80m of reserve funds. While the former Chief Minister and Treasurer was able to keep things under wraps and present it all as good budgeting, in this current year, the third year of her reign, it has all fallen apart. The wheels have fallen off. We now see just how good a management job the Follett Government did. They stuffed it up, Mr Speaker, and now somebody has to fix it. In all of that, of course, they did nothing to restructure the public service, as I have mentioned. They did nothing at all that would result in the saving of money being expended by the Government.

I talked about the budget surpluses and deficits. The former Chief Minister consistently spoke about bringing in surpluses on her budgets. If you look at a table in her own budget papers last year there are a couple of interesting charts which show just what, in fact, the surpluses were. It is very interesting. They show that in the two budgets that I was responsible for, in 1990-91 and 1991-92 - she inherited my budget in 1991-92 - we generated very large surpluses. From the day that Ms Follett developed her first budget in 1992-93, in that year alone, the surplus completely disappeared, and in the years 1993-94 and 1994-95 we were, in fact, in deficit. That shows up in her own budget papers of last year, at pages 34 and 35. Yet this ex-Treasurer used to boast about how she brought in her budgets, saying that they were always balanced or they were always surplus budgets. It is a myth, and her own budget papers prove it to be so.

I turn to the forward estimates for 1995-96 and beyond. This is the work of this good economic manager that we have been hearing so much about for the last three years. Her own economic forecasts, produced only in June last year, turned out by December to be totally wrong in projecting employment rates, CPI indicators and the like. By the middle of the fiscal year those had gone right out of the window and the Treasury had come in with factors that were about half what the former Government was predicting six months ago. We know that Commonwealth inputs have been going down. The Government should have been taking action to offset that. We have known for years that the Commonwealth inputs were going to continue to reduce; but no, we did nothing whatsoever to adjust for that.

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