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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1250 ..

Mrs Carnell: That is right.

MR WOOD: You confirm that. I welcome that interjection, Chief Minister.

MR SPEAKER: It is still out of order.

MR WOOD: To have a teacher there on site, I think, gives proper respect to Sylvia Curley, who donated that property and who was the inspiration for the development of that property.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services and Minister Assisting the Treasurer) (11.42): I think there is one thing that is absolutely clear as a result of the debate so far, and that is that this budget is a very good budget. The evidence of that is the failure of the Opposition to really attack it in any substantive way. It is very easy to nitpick around the edges and say, "You did not give any money to this" or, "You did not give enough to that". But, when you look at the fundamental structure of the budget, the Opposition has in no way questioned the substance of the budget. It is a good budget; there is no doubt about it. It is a budget that has been produced after eight years of continuing decline in Commonwealth financing of this Territory. It is a budget that followed a reconstruction period following five years of Labor government which left this Territory absolutely denuded of financial resources. We all know that just before the last election the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the ACT had virtually reached zero, and that says something about the financial management of the Labor Party that now purports to tell us how to run the place and how to produce a better budget. Well, they have not done so.

Mr Speaker, I believe that this budget represents a very fair balancing of demands against the available financial resources of this Territory. It provides a continuing excellent standard of service in education and health. We spend more money per capita than any other State or Territory in Australia, and we have maintained that. We are providing funds to make Canberra a better place to live in. Despite the weak attack of the Opposition, the Government is doing a great deal to attack the one concern that people in this Territory have at the moment, and that is jobs. There is a book, part of the budget papers, 34 pages long, that outlines the initiatives that the Government is taking to address this one problem, which is the greatest concern to Canberrans today. Mr Wood said there are a thousand things that can be done. I suggest that if he goes through this book from cover to cover he will find that most of them are already in here. That, I think, is a mark of the determination of this Government to deal with the major problem that confronts us today.

The Chief Minister and Treasurer in her speech, at page 1, made the statement:

This budget represents a concerted attempt by the ACT Government to take a leading role in restructuring our economy by making the creation of new jobs and new business opportunities our primary focus.

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