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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1253 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Is it out of balance? How is it out of balance? He does not say. What balance is he going to introduce? He does not say. He said:

A Labor government would commit an additional $5m to real labour market programs and job creation.

My first question is: Where will this gift of $5m come from? I have already outlined the fact that we have put $7.7m into labour market and job creation schemes this year. Where does the extra $5m come from? Is he going to take it out of the education budget, the health budget, public transport, or law and order enforcement? And where will it be spent? Is it going to be spent on new Public Service jobs? He did not define any new project that he is going to put in place. Where does the work come from to justify new Public Service positions? Even if he did, does he know how many Public Service positions it will translate into? Well, I will tell him: Fewer than 100 from $5m. If he is going to put it into the private sector, what is he going to supplement that we are already spending on? How is he going to inject this into the job creation business? Is he going to borrow it? I do not know. He talks about community projects; he is going to spend some of this money on community projects. What sort of community projects? Digging holes and filling them in again? He is very non-specific.

He said:

Finally, Labor ... would bring forward some essential capital works projects immediately.

Can he show me a capital works project that is in this year's capital works budget that is not essential? What additional essential ones are there that he can identify, and how does he bring them forward? How does he bring them forward unless the initial forward design work has been done? There is a process that you have to go through to justify putting a new major capital work into the system, and you do not do it overnight. But he did not justify that; he did not say what capital works would be brought forward. As I say, Mr Speaker, there is a great deal of rhetoric but no substance. In none of these things did he attempt to show that the budget that we put in place last week is deficient. He just set about telling us all the good stuff that he would do if he were running the Territory. Well, all I can say is, "God help us".

Mr Whitecross concluded, and this is the most telling statement of all the things that he said or did not say:

Canberrans are no fools. They recognise [the] hype for what it is.

Yes, Mr Whitecross, they do; and, if they listened to you here last Thursday, they would recognise it for what it is: Simple hype with no substance, which in no way attacks the credibility of the budget that the Chief Minister and Treasurer brought down last week. Mr Speaker, what we have is a good budget to deal with the circumstances of today. I repeat: The Opposition has not yet, in any substantive way, attacked the fundamentals behind that budget.

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