Page 3137 - Week 10 - Thursday, 18 October 2007
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Mr Seselja is quoted here similarly. “The Chief Minister,” Mr Seselja says, “spends his $13½ million surplus.” Mr Mulcahy repeats that it is a $13½ million surplus.
That is under pure GFS which, in their purity, they have adopted, until, of course, they decided they needed to spend and they needed to actually politically posture and cut revenue. So, all of a sudden, the $13½ million surplus, which they have out there consistently claimed over the last year, is not the real surplus. All of a sudden, the real surplus is the GFS surplus, with some accounting for the long-term superannuation return of 7½ per cent. (Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: Mr Gentleman with a supplementary question?
MR GENTLEMAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. My supplementary question is: can the Treasurer say what regard the government pays to the growth of recurrent expenditure in maintaining its vigorous capital works program?
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Mr Gentleman. We do have this rather remarkable position that, all of a sudden—indeed, yesterday—we see abandoned the longstanding promise by the Liberal Party, through Mr Pratt, that they would not tolerate for one minute in government the fire levy. But yesterday, of course, the Liberal Party recanted. They said, “Well, yes, that is a little promise we will just have to break. We now support and endorse the fire levy. We have just discovered we have just spent $70 million and we cannot afford another $20 million on top of it.”
Mr Smyth: I raise a point of order under standing order 118 (b). The minister is debating a subject that is not the subject of the question that he was asked. He has to answer the question or he has to sit down.
MR SPEAKER: He is coming to the subject matter of the question now. I can just sense it.
MR STANHOPE: Thank you very much. I am indeed, Mr Speaker. Mr Gentleman asks what regard the government pays to the growth of recurrent expenditure. Of course, the growth of recurrent expenditure is very important. I might say—and I congratulate them—that the Liberal Party, as of yesterday, have suddenly woken up to this. Having made reckless, knee jerk promises to spend in their first year in government $54 million on 100 acute care beds without, of course, giving us any indication of where they will find the 200 nurses that 100 acute care beds require—there is just the little issue of where the 200 nurses are going to come from—they then, in a little stunt to reduce the average rates in an average household by $2.50 a week because there might actually be a vote in it, say, “Let’s not worry about how we are going to fund the 100 acute care beds or pay for the 200 nurses that will be required. We will knock this $16.5 million out because it has got a bit of immediate political appeal.”
They suddenly decided that they were up to a $70 million hit on a budget which, throughout the entire budget debate, every single member of the opposition claimed, in fact, to be a $13.5 million surplus. It is not a $100 million surplus, in fact. They claim it to be only a $13.5 million surplus because they are pure and they will only
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