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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2519 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MR STEFANIAK: I had an extension, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: That is right. Do you want an extension?

Ms McRae: But he has had his extension.

MR SPEAKER: Do you seek leave to continue?

MR STEFANIAK: Yes, I do, Mr Speaker.

Leave granted.

MR STEFANIAK: Thank you. Mr Connolly says:

Madam Speaker, this talk of cutting and slashing and reducing expenditure in education is ill researched, ill considered nonsense. Mr Moore did not actually look to see how this year's expenditure compared to last year's expenditure. That is not to say that the Government is not committed to a program of creating greater efficiency. The education budget, like any other budget, cannot just grow like Topsy. Every dollar has to be carefully targeted. We have to look for what Mr Moore said we should look for, which is efficiencies.

Mr Speaker, it is very hypocritical for the Labor Government to criticise this Government when one looks at what they said only two years ago.

Mr Wood: Bill, we said we were reducing the budget, so we are happy to take that point.

MR STEFANIAK: You did, but you also said it was going up by 4 per cent. It is amazing. You talk about efficiencies there, Mr Wood. You talk about recurrent expenditure being up from the previous year, and a disciplined budget which will be targeted more effectively. You talk about things which you are criticising us for saying now. Really, Mr Wood and Ms McRae, I find your comments very hypocritical in the extreme.

Ms Follett: We did not promise to quarantine it and you did.

MR STEFANIAK: We have quarantined it. We promised that we would use your figures last year plus the CPI increase- the 1994-95 figures plus the CPI increase. That is exactly what we have done. We have increased it in real terms, just like you said two years ago. It had actually gone up 4 per cent, yet you had to find efficiencies there, which all those quotes quite clearly show. The way you did it was to attempt to reduce teaching numbers by 80. So for you to criticise this budget is quite hypocritical because that is a classic case of deja vu.

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