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surpluses on our budget until two years ago, when we went into deficit. The overall picture of economic and financial management is one of a downhill slide. Every indicator, financial and economic, has shown a gradual downhill slide to the point where we are at zero or below zero economically and financially.

While this was all going on, what was the Labor Government doing? I have accused them before of not managing their budget, of allowing it to run riot. Year after year we have seen blow-outs, we have seen revenue targets either grossly overachieved as a result of pure serendipity or underachieved, and we have seen expenditure programs not achieved. Two years ago the Chief Minister and Treasurer of the day claimed a $60m surplus on her budget at the end of the year. Of that, $30m was unexpected and unplanned revenue from land sales, and the other $30m was money not spent on capital works projects. The Chief Minister claimed this as some sort of managerial legerdemain, as if she had pulled these great achievements out of the hat.

What have we seen in the year that has just finished? We have seen another $33m worth of capital projects approved a year ago not even started at 30 June this year. Where is the management in that? The answer, Mr Speaker, is that there was none. First of all, the Labor Government was not very good at producing budgets. Secondly, it had zero skills in managing the budgets after they had been approved by this place. Not only was there a lack of skills in management but we have now discovered that there was a deliberate decision to throw money around on projects earlier this year, knowing the financial situation that the Territory was in, knowing that we were in a deficit situation, knowing that we had consumed all of our reserves, knowing that the Consolidated Fund had hit zero. We now learn that the Labor Government spent money that it was not authorised to spend. One has to wonder whether, if the government had not changed, all of those things would have just been obscured again in another muddy budget.

I have to ask a question of the former Chief Minister and Treasurer. The downward slide was not news. Charts on pages 34 and 35 of her budget overview paper last year showed it in terms of deficit budgeting. But that paper was very optimistic about the downward slide in budget surpluses and deficits, because it said that by next year, not this year, we would be back in surplus. I have to ask the former Chief Minister and Treasurer: When we had had a downhill slide for five years, what was going to put us suddenly back into surplus on our budget, mysteriously generate funds in our Consolidated Fund and put us back into a strong financial and economic position? The answer is that nothing was going to happen. If the government had not changed, all that would have happened is that the present Leader of the Opposition would have been sitting over here presenting a budget with $60m worth of borrowing in it, but hidden amongst that would have been all of the mismanagement and muddying of the waters that had been going on for five years. We would not have known about it. I do not believe that that was financially responsible management. It was not economically responsible management. It was a total disregard for the community interest.

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