Page 2705 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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Hospitals
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Chief Minister and Treasurer. I refer to the Hansard of last Wednesday when we were debating the hospitals and the blow-out of costs. The Chief Minister, in explaining that $2.5m overrun, said that current expenditure is abnormally inflated by workers compensation payments which will be refunded under new arrangements with COMCARE - and the amount we were talking about was $2.2m. Chief Minister, was this $2.2m amount that was actually budgeted for an expected payment that was then made? Secondly, is it not true that this is not a refundable amount but a prepayment and under no circumstances would the money ever be refunded? If that supposition is incorrect, when would you expect it to be refunded and under what conditions?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mr Kaine for that question. I think I made it clear at the time, when I was speaking on that matter in the Assembly last week, that the information that I was providing was of an interim nature, that work was continuing by my Treasury people in looking at the current financial position of the health area, and that what I was offering was very much preliminary advice.
Mr Kaine has asked some specific questions about workers compensation, the timing of arrangements for COMCARE and so on. I do not have that detail available to me at the moment. I expect it would be a matter that would be taken up in the continuing work being done by Treasury, but I undertake to get some further information on that and make it available as soon as I can.
MR KAINE: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I do not think that answer addresses the question. The Chief Minister less than a week ago was quite positive that this amount was an unusual and an abnormal inflation of the expenditures in the first quarter of the year. There was nothing conditional about that. She either got that from the Treasury team that made an interim report or she made it up. I think that she surely can answer the question that I have asked, and not fob it off as something that is interim and that she may get more information about at some future time. This is an amount of $2.2m which she referred to specifically.
MR SPEAKER: Would you please ask the question.
MR KAINE: I have asked the question, and I would like to get a specific answer to it, Mr Speaker, rather than have it again, as so often is the case, simply shrugged off as being unimportant and no answer given to the question.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Speaker, the information that I provided last week was information that had been provided to me by the Treasury in its interim reporting on its ongoing work looking at the funding position of the hospitals. I think I have made it clear that I do not have the kind of detail
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