Page 2572 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 15 November 1989
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2. Elimination of the employment category of hospital assistants and the return to nurses of some of their former duties.
3. Changes to nurse rostering arrangements including the removal of the two and a half hour shift overlap at RCH.
And he said:
These items in the long term would result in continuing savings in the order of $2-3m.
This is the issue, Mr Speaker - the $2m to $3m which could be saved if this Minister was prepared to face up to his responsibilities. The issue is not whether there has been a blow-out in the hospital budget. You can cover a blow-out by increasing your allocation to the hospital system. That is not the point. The point is that there is waste and mismanagement in our hospital system and we need to address it.
Although the Minister has known for six months that this is here, he has not attempted to address those issues. He should have done so. Finally, Mr Speaker, I read the last paragraph of that letter:
As we are already four months into the financial year and fast running out of savings options, I seek your early consideration and assistance in the urgent resolution of these difficult issues.
This is the acting chairman of the interim hospitals board writing to "Sit-on-your-hands" Berry, asking him for urgent action. Well, I am afraid that he will not get it from this Minister.
Rather than support this board, rather than back up his own interim hospitals board, the Minister has chosen to attack it. He has said, in effect, "Board, your days are numbered". He has sent to it and to any other board which might succeed it an unmistakable signal. This Minister is saying that he does not wish it to address cost saving measures which entail rolling back the overmanning and inefficient work practices which have grown up in the hospital system over the last few years. He has shown a complete unwillingness to do that. The fact is, however, Mr Speaker, that our hospital system is foundering. It cannot afford more indecision. It cannot afford to wait. But that is what is being offered by this Minister.
I come to a few points made in a paper which was prepared for the interim hospitals board. It indicates very clearly the kinds of rorts which are going on in our hospital system and which this Government is apparently incapable of addressing. Let us look at the comparison of labour costs and numbers between the ACT and the rest of the country. These figures are, unfortunately, a couple of years old but they probably have not improved from the Minister's point
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