Mr EDE - 1995-05-17
Recently, chief executive officers have been told to cut $28m from this year's budget. Particular chief executive officers have been issued instructions to severely curtail recruitment, stop short-term employment, severely restrict travel, stop purchases of computers, ban the attendance of staff at conferences, cut expenditure on the show circuit and cease sponsorship of worthy causes. The Treasurer made an election promise that he would resign from politics if the budget was not delivered in full. The Treasurer repeated that promise after the election, but he has not resigned. How does the Treasurer expect Territorians to trust as Chief Minister a man who makes promises, repeats those promises and then breaks them?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, this is a great question that has been well written for the Leader of the Opposition. When putting the question, he had about as much sincerity as a newsreader: `14 people were killed in Biafra today and 6 people were killed trying to cross the road ...' There was absolutely no feeling in his delivery at all. Honourable members will remember the Leader of the Opposition's predictions of doom and gloom and insistence that the budget would not stack up. It is a little like the present budget which he is saying is an `orphan' budget. I give him an undertaking now that this budget will be processed through this House with myself as Treasurer. There is no question about that. The nonsense that he puts out in the industry and the rumours that he tries to spread have been proven wrong time and time again.
Mr Ede: You issued a press release! You stated it in a press release!
Mr COULTER: Yes, and I also gave very clear undertakings at the end of my budget speech last year, and I will be giving them again. In fact, the budget speech I will make in less than 24 hours will contain those 4 statements. Every goal and every fiscal target that we set has been achieved. We do not have the actuals. They are projected actuals, of course, because 30 June is the end of the financial year and the audited figures will not be available until August. However, the goals have been achieved and there has been none of the doom and gloom that the Leader of the Opposition spoke about.
In relation to the $28m that he talks about, no $28m was achieved. We knew that we would be in a fair bit of trouble in Canberra when we went there this year. The fact is that, the year before, we lost $44m in capital grants, which was a severe blow to this government because it was how we funded ...
Mr Ede: Which was factored into the budget.
Mr COULTER: It was not factored into the budget.
It is how we funded all those things that the Grants Commission said the Territory required and that, at the stroke of a pen, we had lost the year before. That is how we fund many of the items in the infrastructure area that are required in the Northern Territory that the Grants Commission does not assess. This year, we lost $19m from the special revenue
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assistance. Luckily for us and for Territorians, the Chief Minister, myself, and the minister assisting the Treasurer had a meeting with Mr Keating and Mr Willis and we were able to have that special revenue assistance guaranteed at $10m for next year, an additional $5m over 3 years and a review of the special revenue assistance, because they realised just how severe those cuts had been.
In preparation for that, and knowing that all these things would happen ...
Mr Ede interjecting.
Mr COULTER: You will hear it all tomorrow. You will really look pretty silly, but you do that every day.
Mr Ede: You do not do a bad job when you break your promises all the time.
Mr COULTER: What I asked you to do was to resign if all the things that I said in the budget came true.
Mr Ede: Well, they did not.
Mr COULTER: You were not honest enough to stand up and say that, if the doom and gloom you prophesied and the ERC process you have projected did not materialise, you would resign. We could not get that assurance from you. We decided that we needed to take precautions to ensure that the Territory would not be knocked about too much and we asked to have 2.5% back this year and 1.25% in the following year from the federal budget, and only in the areas that were designated quite clearly.
We did not obtain the $28m. Let's forget that nonsense.
Mr Ede: Then you failed!
Mr COULTER: Yes, we did fail. We did not cut into them to that extent.
The budget that I will bring down in this Assembly tomorrow is a budget that I will be extremely proud of, and I am proud of the CEOs and the managers of the Northern Territory who have understood the conditions and the times that we are in and who have delivered great fiscal restraint where it was required. New initiatives have been implemented where required, particularly in the area of Aboriginal health and health in general. Some further information on that will be provided to this Assembly in a moment. We have heard the member for Barkly say that not enough money has been put into health. Health's budget has gone up nearly 40% in 4 years. There has been a massive change from $230m to around $310m this year. That is the level of growth in the health budget.
As for the kind of nonsense we have been hearing from the member for Barkly, it reminds me that the Prime Minister spoke yesterday about people being illiterate. He need look no further than his own party and its representatives in the Northern Territory if he wants an excellent example of fiscal illiteracy.
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ANSWER
Mr Speaker, this is a great question that has been well written for the Leader of the Opposition. When putting the question, he had about as much sincerity as a newsreader: `14 people were killed in Biafra today and 6 people were killed trying to cross the road ...' There was absolutely no feeling in his delivery at all. Honourable members will remember the Leader of the Opposition's predictions of doom and gloom and insistence that the budget would not stack up. It is a little like the present budget which he is saying is an `orphan' budget. I give him an undertaking now that this budget will be processed through this House with myself as Treasurer. There is no question about that. The nonsense that he puts out in the industry and the rumours that he tries to spread have been proven wrong time and time again.
Mr Ede: You issued a press release! You stated it in a press release!
Mr COULTER: Yes, and I also gave very clear undertakings at the end of my budget speech last year, and I will be giving them again. In fact, the budget speech I will make in less than 24 hours will contain those 4 statements. Every goal and every fiscal target that we set has been achieved. We do not have the actuals. They are projected actuals, of course, because 30 June is the end of the financial year and the audited figures will not be available until August. However, the goals have been achieved and there has been none of the doom and gloom that the Leader of the Opposition spoke about.
In relation to the $28m that he talks about, no $28m was achieved. We knew that we would be in a fair bit of trouble in Canberra when we went there this year. The fact is that, the year before, we lost $44m in capital grants, which was a severe blow to this government because it was how we funded ...
Mr Ede: Which was factored into the budget.
Mr COULTER: It was not factored into the budget.
It is how we funded all those things that the Grants Commission said the Territory required and that, at the stroke of a pen, we had lost the year before. That is how we fund many of the items in the infrastructure area that are required in the Northern Territory that the Grants Commission does not assess. This year, we lost $19m from the special revenue
Page 532
assistance. Luckily for us and for Territorians, the Chief Minister, myself, and the minister assisting the Treasurer had a meeting with Mr Keating and Mr Willis and we were able to have that special revenue assistance guaranteed at $10m for next year, an additional $5m over 3 years and a review of the special revenue assistance, because they realised just how severe those cuts had been.
In preparation for that, and knowing that all these things would happen ...
Mr Ede interjecting.
Mr COULTER: You will hear it all tomorrow. You will really look pretty silly, but you do that every day.
Mr Ede: You do not do a bad job when you break your promises all the time.
Mr COULTER: What I asked you to do was to resign if all the things that I said in the budget came true.
Mr Ede: Well, they did not.
Mr COULTER: You were not honest enough to stand up and say that, if the doom and gloom you prophesied and the ERC process you have projected did not materialise, you would resign. We could not get that assurance from you. We decided that we needed to take precautions to ensure that the Territory would not be knocked about too much and we asked to have 2.5% back this year and 1.25% in the following year from the federal budget, and only in the areas that were designated quite clearly.
We did not obtain the $28m. Let's forget that nonsense.
Mr Ede: Then you failed!
Mr COULTER: Yes, we did fail. We did not cut into them to that extent.
The budget that I will bring down in this Assembly tomorrow is a budget that I will be extremely proud of, and I am proud of the CEOs and the managers of the Northern Territory who have understood the conditions and the times that we are in and who have delivered great fiscal restraint where it was required. New initiatives have been implemented where required, particularly in the area of Aboriginal health and health in general. Some further information on that will be provided to this Assembly in a moment. We have heard the member for Barkly say that not enough money has been put into health. Health's budget has gone up nearly 40% in 4 years. There has been a massive change from $230m to around $310m this year. That is the level of growth in the health budget.
As for the kind of nonsense we have been hearing from the member for Barkly, it reminds me that the Prime Minister spoke yesterday about people being illiterate. He need look no further than his own party and its representatives in the Northern Territory if he wants an excellent example of fiscal illiteracy.
Page 533
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016