Opposition Quick With The Witty Gibes <p>as Egan Labours Through His Spending Lists

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday June 23, 2004

COMMENT By IAN KIRKWOOD

IT was the budget that sent Bob Carr to New Zealand.

That reference to the Premier's recent property purchase in the Shakey Isles was one of the funnier Opposition barbs delivered while Treasurer Michael Egan delivered his 10th budget yesterday.

If there was ever a parliamentary convention that the Treasurer read his speech in silence it was not in evidence yesterday.

Opposition front bencher Brad Hazzard was thrown out later in the day and several of his colleagues were warned while Mr Egan had the floor.

``Here it comes," they shouted, as Mr Egan wound up for his final exhortation, that ``once again, Mr Speaker, I am proud to describe it as a fair dinkum Labor budget".

If there was one way to describe the budget, it would be short on impact after most of the heavy economic details were set out in the Government's mini-budget in April.

To compensate, Mr Egan recounted, at a measured pace, the names of more than 75 road projects and a similarly long list of schools.

``Airds High School, Ashtonfield Public School," he began, all the way to Vardy Road Public School and Westmead Public School.

Thankfully, by the time he came to a list of two dozen TAFE colleges, he named only the lucky towns, starting at Armidale and ending at Wyong.

In the best political traditions, it was only those still awake at the end who heard that the budget deficit had blown out to $379million from about $300million, and that the supposedly debt-shy Treasurer was allowing his power stations, water corporations and other utilities to borrow $5.9million over the coming four years, with ``underlying government net debt to rise moderately over the coming year".

Emphasising his ``fairness", Mr Egan said his April mini-budget property taxes were there ``to tilt the balance in favour of first-home owners and to discourage property speculation" after a decade in which ``the cost of housing almost trebled" and the numbers of first-home owner loans halved.

© 2004 Newcastle Herald

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