Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3622 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

For example, they classified all of Canberra as inner metropolitan, like Sydney and Melbourne, where there is 98 per cent bulk-billing and the number of doctors per capita is well above the national average. They were classifying us as inner metropolitan. They still classify Darwin as inner metropolitan and that is a disgrace because, in Darwin, the GP numbers and the bulk-billing rates are even worse than ours. It demonstrates that the approach the government adopted was to push the federal government to recognise these issues and to change the application of its policy on the district and workforce shortages of GPs. This policy was not applied previously to the ACT, even though our GP numbers are 30 per cent below the national average.

The change in that policy now means that the Commonwealth will assist with applications from ACT GPs to fill vacant positions in their practices in areas where there is shortage, so they will be able to recruit overseas-trained doctors who would not previously have been allowed to practise as GPs in Canberra. We have already had two doctors apply through that scheme. To get two new doctors coming into Canberra just in the last month or so is a win in itself. That is the significance of the shift and that is why we adopted the approach we did.

We adopted this approach because you have to have some negotiating power. If I had done what Mr Smyth had wanted me to do, then I would have capitulated early, I would have just signed up, and we would not have these results. You have to push the person you are negotiating with. That is what the states and territories were doing and, when it became clear that the Commonwealth was not prepared to shift at all, we took the steps we could take to get the best possible outcome for the ACT.

I have said to Senator Patterson, and I will say it again in this place, that the deal itself is inadequate. It is inadequate because, as Mr Stanhope said in question time today, it is a billion dollars less for public health nationally. That is the Liberals' legacy: a billion dollars less than they themselves predicted in their original forward estimates in the budget before last. It is a billion dollars less for public hospitals. It is a disastrous legacy that they are leaving for future governments to address.

The tactics of the federal government really were quite close to blackmail when it came to the Australia health care agreement, because it was either sign or get even less money. The options that states and territories had at the end of the day were get less money, or get even less money. Sign or do not sign, but either way you are going to end up with less money than the federal government itself originally predicted. It was a pretty unattractive option for any state or territory leader, or any state or territory health minister, because they know, we know and I know the pressure our system is under and what is needed to adequately resource it. To come up with a solution that delivers less money is not generous.

Mr Smyth comes into this place and says, "Oh, but they are going to index it by CPI."It will be indexed not by the health CPI, Mr Speaker, but by the general cost wage-indexed CPI. That CPI is less than the rate of growth in the cost of health services, so what the Commonwealth is actually delivering is less money. They are not asking us to do more with the same. They are asking us to do more with less, because the CPI is less than the rate of growth in the cost of delivering health services. In previous arrangements, at least there was an opportunity for an independent arbiter about what the CPI rate of growth

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .