Thank you, hon House Chairperson and hon members. As the hon member spoke here I was wondering whether it is my time that is wrong or maybe the House Chairperson's time, but the House Chairperson correctly said to me he was within his time.
I would like to congratulate the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, for presenting a budget representing the spirit of hope embodied in the state of the nation address, which was made in this House by our President, the hon President Mbeki.
In tabling the 2006 Budget, the Minister of Finance correctly used the quotation from Ben Okri's book, A Way of Being Free. Central to this quotation he used, in my view, is a reminder that there are no easy victories. What we have been able to achieve as a country, 12 years into our democracy, owes much to the tough decisions we had taken earlier with regard to the management of our economy while at the same time addressing the legacy of social inequities in our society.
We can indeed repeat the words of President Mbeki in this year's state of address that today is better than yesterday. Indeed, our yesterdays are a myriad of challenges that we had to contend with, both as government, this Parliament, as well as our people. Central to these challenges has been the building of a nonracial, nonsexist democratic South Africa, an ideal espoused by our people in 1955 in Kliptown when they drafted the Freedom Charter. It also has been about building a caring society.
The 2006 Budget is, once again, a reminder that we are indeed on the path of building a caring society. Our social wage, as reflected in many aspects of this budget, in particular the social security system, which is the largest expenditure item in this budget, is an indication that the poor are at the centre of our development. It is against this background that I support the growth and income support to vulnerable households while at the same time ensuring that our communities are not overly dependent on state support, but seek employment opportunities, as well as access other government programmes, such as the food production support grants available through our provincial departments of agriculture within the context of the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme.
The mobilisation of the poor and vulnerable through the self-help programmes and co-operatives seeks to ensure that our social security system, as an intervention, creates an enabling environment while it assists people to engage in programmes that can improve their capacity to provide incomes for themselves.
The continuous support to learners from a poor background, particularly with regard to bursary allocation as is reflected in the National School Financial Aid Scheme, is another intervention that seeks to support those who are vulnerable in our society, as well as ensuring that it can contribute to the building of skills - a capacity which all agree we need in this country.
The allocation of the conditional grants to provinces as a way of improving mass participation in sport and recreation again affirms our commitment to building a caring society and a healthy society too. The Minister of Health's initiative, which is a campaign known as Vuka South Africa, would also ensure that we as citizens play our part in improving our own health while at the same time we partner with government in improving our capacity to deal with the challenges that are there in terms of our health situation. The budget also reflects our commitment to support delivery at local government. This is an area all of us would agree is where we are able to access the impact of our policies and programmes. The support given towards continuing with Project Consolidate, which, as we know, was an intervention to ensure that we can support those municipalities that are ailing, is again a way in which we can, in a meaningful way, show a need for integrated government. All of us who have been engaged in the campaigns at local government have realised that this area of our work is an important indicator of an integrated and co-ordinated government.
I hope that the amounts that are reflected in the budget, as tabled by the Minister in February, towards the support to political parties will ensure that, as the members of this Parliament, in doing our work in the constituencies we will be able to lend support to the local government at municipal level. It is also necessary that we are able to induct and work with the newly elected representatives so that they themselves can fully appreciate the work that they have to do in order to improve the capacity of our people in making their lives better.
In order for our government to work as a collective, we would like to lend our support to the work that the Presidency is doing through the Presidential Co-ordinating Committee, as well as the resources, financially, that have been provided by the Minister of Finance in this budget. We have seen improvements particularly from last year July to this year January where alignment in having the lekgotla between national government and provincial government enabled us to bring synergy to our work.
It is also necessary for me to point to the work that is being done by the Premiers through their Premier's Co-ordinating Forum, which also brings together the district mayors to ensure that both in the planning and the execution of our development programmes we can deliver quality service to our people. Indeed, Ben Okri, as the Minister of Finance reminded us, indicates that there would always be challenges that lie ahead of us as long as we live. Hence, as we climb the mountains, we are mindful of the frontiers ahead.
I am mindful of the challenges of spending in the area of conditional grants. Some of these are clearly evident when one examines the spending in the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme by various provincial departments of agriculture. In itself, the essence of the grant cannot be dismissed as being unimportant. However, our responsibility is to deal with the challenges on spending that are there.
It is therefore comforting that the national departments affected by conditional grants - not just the Department of Agriculture, but other departments at national level - have devised mechanisms to work in support of the provinces so that they can improve the quality of spending. This would also mean, as the Minister of Finance articulated in the presentation of the budget, that we might have to review the criteria that we have set to ensure that indeed they themselves don't become an impediment for spending by the provinces.
What we have seen in the weeks after the tabling of the budget by Parliament was engaging with the various departments, looking at where we need to improve, alerting us to what the challenges are that we need to continue to deal with. Therefore what we have seen today, Minister of Finance, is actually an indication of the work that has been done over these weeks by members of this Parliament to ensure that as the executive, as well as the administration, as we discharge our duty we are mindful of those frontiers that lie ahead of us that we need to conquer.
I'm sure as Parliament we will play our oversight role so that, as the departments as well as the executive continue with their work we are able not only to monitor and evaluate the impact of the programme but also to lend a helping hand. I thank you, House Chairperson. [Applause.]