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MR MOORE (4.22): Mr Speaker, since it seems to be the thing to do, I draw attention to the fact that I have only one page. I think you will find that with one page I will be able to deal with what some people seem to require eight pages or more to deal with.

MR SPEAKER: You meet with great favour from the Chair, Mr Moore.

MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I will try to ensure that nobody in this chamber is tempted to nod off. I will use a little bit of flamboyance. Mr Speaker, let us leave the rhetoric of the black hole and dire economic straits that nobody would believe. When I sat in this chamber, in this very seat, for the budget a year ago, I heard all the dire predictions that we would see the Territory crumbling around us.

Mr Speaker, this is a budget for the big end of town. There is no question about that. It is not a budget for small business. There is no doubt that this Government has looked after its own constituency. Mr Osborne and Mr Kaine drew attention to the notion of the winners and the losers. The winners are the big end of town but not small business, as the Liberal Party would like to present the picture. By “small business” I mean businesses with five or six employees. They are the people who have missed out. Those with 25 or more employees are the winners. They are the winners through at least $13m in payroll tax and an extra $10m thrown into the general business and tourism area. Who pays for this? It will be the small businesses, the people with four or five employees. They are going to pay. Of course, ordinary wage earners will also pay.

Mr Speaker, I shall come back to the notion that there has been only a 5 per cent increase in revenue, taking into account the CPI; but, first of all, let us deal with a little issue that was raised in question time today. Mr Stefaniak, in response to a question of mine, pointed out that they had made no cuts in education beyond the 1994-95 appropriation plus the $7m. In an interjection that I managed to get past you, Mr Speaker, I pointed out that he had been tricked. Indeed, he has been tricked, Mr Speaker, and there are other tricks in this budget. You cannot put out a whole budget and say that every single budgetary unit is going to have a bottom line starting from the expenditure last year, other than in the case of education, which goes back to what was appropriated in 1994-95, and do your comparisons. That is treating one specific area differently from every other area.

That might be good enough for the Liberals to fulfil the promises that they made at the last election. I am sure that that would satisfy you that you were keeping your promise. That is not the issue. The issue is whether education has had a cut or not. There is no doubt in my mind, Mr Speaker, that there has been a cut. Where did it come from? We know that the previous Government granted to teachers a wage rise for which the full costing is $6.9m per year. The normal process is to take such money from Consolidated Revenue so that it becomes part of the bottom line. That is how it has been done everywhere, except in education.

Mrs Carnell: Not in health.

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