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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2095 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

mentioning. Of course, Mr Speaker, there are the free school buses. The assumption that has been made again and again by this opposition is that it is only the Canberra Grammar students who are going to get the benefit of these sorts of measures, Mr Speaker, but, as Mr Smyth explained today, more than 40 per cent of those people who have already made application for free school buses are in fact going to government schools in the ACT.

Mr Berry: No, non-government schools.

MR HUMPHRIES: More than 40 per cent are going to government schools.

Mr Berry: Sorry, mate. I don't think he is right, is he Brendan? It is 40 per cent for non-government.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, the fact is that there are many measures in this budget-

Mr Berry: Seventy-five per cent miss out.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I heard Mr Berry in silence.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please, Mr Berry. Do not forget that you are still under warning.

Mr Berry: For this? I thought I was under warning for raising points of order, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: You are still under warning, and I do not differentiate.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, there are many measures in this budget designed to help deal with fundamental issues of equity in this society, measures directly affecting issues to do with relief of poverty and early intervention in social problems. This is the first budget where we have seen an integrated approach to these issues, and what do we hear? "Oh, you have too many things on your plate. It therefore can't be coordinated. It must be just lots of little bits and pieces you have plucked out of the air. Therefore you are operating a budget which does not hang together very well." Well, of all the budgets in all the years that I have been in this place, this is the one that least suffers from that.

Mr Quinlan: Read the community submissions, Mr Treasurer.

MR HUMPHRIES: I have also read parts of the community submissions which are extremely flattering about this budget, very flattering indeed, and I might quote specific parts later on in this debate. In fact, almost every organisation that has been quoted tonight has also something nice to say about the budget, which is more than can be said about any member of the opposition.

Mr Quinlan raised again his old problem about the fact that the 1995-96 financial year for which the $344 million operating loss was identified was a year in which the Liberal Party was in government. We have been over this many times before, but I will put on the record once more, Mr Speaker, that in the 1995-96 budget, the first budget that the government brought down, we were reining in the purse strings like you wouldn't

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