Page 3708 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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Mrs Grassby: Bob who?
MR KAINE: He was the forward-looking Prime Minister who preceded the present one. That was the principal item on the agenda - to fix this vertical fiscal imbalance. If you look at the agendas of the last two meetings of this organisation, in February and August of this year, the subject does not even get a mention. It has disappeared off the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments, but the problem has not been fixed. In fact, if anything, it is getting worse.
The thing that I could see on the agenda that comes nearest to addressing the issues that have emerged out of the fiscal imbalance is this question of the definition of the Commonwealth-State roles and responsibilities. I suppose that, if you redefine the roles as to who is to deliver services and where the money is going to come from, ultimately at least you are going part way to addressing this problem; but what has happened to that? At the February meeting - I am reading from the communique - it was agreed that this should be the main item on the agenda for the meeting of the council in August of 1994. So, it was not addressed at any great depth in February, and the Chief Minister duly conveyed that to us in her report. She said this:
In recognition of the fundamental significance of this work, it was agreed to make this the main item for discussion at the next COAG meeting, scheduled for August this year.
What happened to it? Come the August meeting, it did not get a mention in the communique that was put out; so, obviously it was not dealt with. It was written off, along with a number of other major issues that should have been addressed, and were not, in these words:
The matters on the agenda that the council did not address will be progressed by correspondence -
it must be very important stuff if you are going to progress it by correspondence -
or, where this is not practical, referred to the next meeting of COAG, which will be in Adelaide on 23 and 24 February 1995.
We have had two meetings of this organisation this year and the major issue for which the organisation was brought together in the first place has not even been addressed and is going to be dealt with either by correspondence or at the next meeting, maybe. It seems to me that the players in the game have lost the ball. They do not know where the ball is. They are out on the field and the ball is there somewhere, but they do not know where it is. I wonder whether they will even find it again.
The thing that concerns me about that, Madam Speaker, is that there has been a great emphasis on the Hilmer report. This seems to have become the thing that is going to save the country for the next few decades. There is good reason to suggest that, while implementation of the Hilmer recommendations - if they are ever implemented - will effect some economic efficiencies, unless this organisation gets back to the main game and
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