Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

None . . Page.. 1658 ..

What happened? Fortunately for this community, the government changed in February and we got a government that really looked at the situation, analysed it and asked itself what it must do to keep its head above water economically and financially - not to have surpluses, but to keep its head above water. The budget that we have before us today is the product of that. It is a responsible budget that took the problems head on and identified priorities, despite the Greens' assertion that the Government did not do any prioritising. The Government has agonised at great length over its priorities, and it has made substantive judgments about how the money that we have available to us has to be spent over the next three years to get us back into a surplus on our budget in three years’ time. Not this year, not next year, as the former Chief Minister was projecting, although on what basis I cannot imagine, but in two years from now, hopefully, we will be back in a surplus position on our budget.

I cannot understand why it is that we have a debate here in which person after person stands up and criticises what the Government has done and criticises its budget. In my view, what the Government has done has been extremely responsible and extremely responsive to the need. You can argue the toss. Mr Osborne said that some people get some and some people do not, and some people have to pay and some people do not. That is the way things are. That is life. The Government has the difficult responsibility of deciding who pays and who receives. I think that this budget represents a responsible solution to those problems, given the financial and economic circumstances we find ourselves in. If members in the Opposition know where we can get $60m to fund the program without borrowing, I would love to hear from them. They had 4½ years. They did not constrain the expenditure side of the budget. They built the revenues up as far as they could whack them, to the point where - - -

Mr Connolly: That is nonsense. You had the largest increase in taxes when you were Treasurer.

MR KAINE: I am sure that Mr Connolly is an expert economist! I would like him to tell me where he would get the $60m that is required to balance this year's budget. The answer, Mr Connolly, is that you would have borrowed it. Because you would have borrowed it, the AAA rating that the former Chief Minister is so proud of would have been looking a bit shaky. It would have happened; had you stayed in office, you would have had to contend with it.

Mr Connolly: This is an acknowledgment that it is going to come down, is it? “Kaine admits AAA rating under threat”.

MR KAINE: The AAA rating - and I have to remind them because they obviously do not understand what it is for - is merely a reflection of our level of borrowing. It says nothing about the way we managed our budget. Hidden behind this AAA rating, which reflects our level of borrowing, is all the muddy management that I talked about whereby all of our money went down the gurgler and our Consolidated Fund was reduced to zero. Our budget has been reduced to the point where we are in deficit and likely to stay there for another two years. Behind that was all this - I was going to say “shonky”, but perhaps I had better not say that - absolute failure to manage the budget.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .