Page 2581 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 15 November 1989
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In order to avert this, the Government had developed a package of measures which would help balance the budget by reducing recurrent expenditure. Proposals in the health area, we were told, responded to some of the sources of overfunding identified by the Grants Commission. The Chief Minister stated that she would address this problem in a manner which would "realise substantial savings".
We have heard the Minister run through some of the specific proposals, including matters such as the rationalisation of nursing shift arrangements at the Royal Canberra Hospital to eliminate excessive overlap, the rationalisation of food preparation services and the coordination of staff days off to align elective service with staff availability. The nursing shift proposal was abandoned by the Minister after he had been put in his place by the Royal Australian Nursing Federation. No public announcement has been made about staff days off, so we must assume that the Health Minister is still negotiating with his union mates on this one, and that is hardly cost-effective.
Mr Berry: The Liberals have not got too many mates, Trevor.
MR KAINE: I listened to you very carefully, and I would appreciate it if you would do the same for me. On food service, the Hospital Employees Federation is currently telling the Minister that that is not on, so we can safely assume that he will go to water on that one too. So much for all these savings that the Chief Minister and the Minister were going to make.
Mr Berry has been well aware of the fact that the ACT hospital system has spent far more money than was allocated to it. The board, which he is so determined to get rid of, has informed him and offered solutions to rectify the situation. But it clearly depends on how much union clout one has. If one has plenty of union clout, the Minister listens and he does what he is told. But if one does not have any union clout, like the board, one gets fired.
We have already seen a $2.5m blow-out in the first quarter of the fiscal year, and if it continues it could cost taxpayers over $10m this year. Mr Berry denies this, but he will not produce any real figures to say what the extent of the blow-out really is. In my view and by any measure, this represents an absolute failure on the Minister's part; firstly, to control the financial operations of his department; secondly, to take firm management decisions to rectify an out-of-control system; and, thirdly, to account to this Assembly and the community for his stewardship. Rather, he hides behind the smokescreens of confidentiality and further investigations - two time-honoured practices of ineffective managers who try to avoid the issues.
So much for the Chief Minister's open government. We cannot even get an answer in question time as to what is going on. The Minister is certainly not going to tell us
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