Page 2529 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 23 August 1994
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It must have an effect on the budget. It has to come from somewhere and, if it is paid back by the TAB, it is going to represent a net reduction in the amount of money paid by the TAB to be used for public purposes. Somewhere along the line, the taxpayer out there is going to produce $3m.
Mr Lamont: A good deal!
MR KAINE: We have heard about good deals before - "Have I got a good deal for you? It is money for jam". We have heard it before, have we not? The only one that has got money for jam is VITAB.
Mr Lamont: If Mrs Carnell had been doing it, she would have been paying out $50m, if you listened to her. Then she knocked it down to $10m. If she had not been out there yelling at us, it would not have got that far.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Mr Kaine has the floor.
MR KAINE: I think that I am making my point, Madam Speaker. We go through these processes every year and we get no closer to finding out how good the budget is. We get no closer to figuring out how well the Government manages. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to say that it manages badly. We have no evidence whatsoever and there are no performance criteria, even after all these years, that we can use to say, "Yes, the Government at least did that right". You cannot focus on it anywhere. However, there will be another bite at the cherry in a couple of months' time, when we can at least look at last year.
The regrettable thing is that with this year's budget, once we approve it, it will be a whole year before we get another look at it. So, with all its flaws, with all its faults, with all the mismanagement, with all the bad management, it is going to be a whole year before we know whether the Government really needs this money or whether it has spent it badly. I suspect that we need, amongst other things, to have a more frequent review. The New Zealand Government submits six-monthly reports to its parliament on how the Government is going, and maybe we need to do that. Maybe we need to get a look halfway through the year, without waiting until the end of the year, until it is all over and done with, and then discovering all the errors and all the holes in it.
Mr Lamont: I reckon that we have good performance measures. We measure our performance against his, and we come out ahead every time.
MR KAINE: Madam Speaker, could the chatter be cut down a bit? He will get his chance when he responds to this, if he wants to respond.
MADAM SPEAKER: That is fair comment, Mr Kaine.
MR KAINE: There are some very substantive recommendations in this report, which I hope the Government takes very seriously, that have to do with their performance, measuring it, and their being accountable for it. I can only hope that the Government takes this report as seriously as the other members of the Assembly do and that they pay some regard to those recommendations.
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