Mr BALDWIN (8:52 PM) —I, like many members in New South Wales, awoke this morning to find out that the New South Wales government was recalling the New South Wales parliament next week to have a mini-budget. `Mini-budget' means mismanagement. As a member from the Hunter, it concerned me when I read the Newcastle Herald this morning and saw the headline: `$35m service cuts to Hunter'. The article said:

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I find this absolutely outrageous, when you consider that the New South Wales state Labor government have had an enormous windfall from stamp duty. In fact, they have had $8.4 billion in unexpected revenues in the last nine years. In 2004-05 they will receive from the Commonwealth a total of $15.9163 billion, which is a total increase of $188 million on the year before. In fact, the amount they will receive in total is nearly double the $8.348 billion they received in 1995-96. As I said, `mini-budget' equals mismanagement.

The Telegraph today highlighted the fact that there has been some $3.3 billion of wastage by the New South Wales Labor government. That includes the political advertising costs of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which were $875,000. Energy Australia's loss on PowerTel was $96 million. The aborted Austeel project cost $21 million. The health write-off for the Allandale Aged Care Facility in the Hunter was $30.5 million. The millennium train stages 1 and 2 blow-out was $114 million. The Hunter and outer suburban train carriages blow-out was $78 million. The Pacific Highway upgrade blow-out was $876 million. The New South Wales government also spent $99 million in 2002-03 on consultants' bills for their mates. The amount spent on displaced public servants was $17.4 million. The one I love most of all is the fact that the department of education failed to budget for a leap year, which led to a blow-out of $8.6 million. State debt recovery office mismanagement cost $32 million. Those in the state government super fund would love the fact that their state Labor government have delivered them a Treasury managed fund negative investment return of $305 million. The list goes on and on. The Labor government in New South Wales have mismanaged $3.3 billion of taxpayers' money.

They talk about the Commonwealth Grants Commission. That is an independent body that distributes to the states the GST revenue—which will be $34 billion in the next financial year. The New South Wales government will receive a minimum of $9.6 billion of that GST revenue. Compare that to Victoria, which receives $7 billion, and Queensland, which receives $6.6 billion. The New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, loved this distribution of funds not so long ago. He wrote in his diary on 19 April 1999:

So when Bob Carr thinks he is getting a good deal, everything is fine and rosy, but when he thinks he is not he complains. New South Wales has the highest tax per person in the entire Australian state system. We pay more tax per person in New South Wales than happens anywhere else. Bob Carr and Michael Egan have more money now than ever before, yet they have run short. We have not seen massive increases in teachers' wages, nurses' wages or police wages. In fact, we have seen effective cutbacks. I call on the Carr Labor government to manage their money properly or get out of the chair and let a New South Wales Liberal-National Party government manage it effectively. (Time expired)