Page 4422 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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I would like to see Mr Berry's costings, which he would never produce then and which he cannot produce now, as to how he was going to produce the extra $50m to $60m that he would have needed to keep the Royal Canberra Hospital in place. I would like to see where he was going to get the extra operating money from every year to keep three hospitals operating. He could not do it; he cannot do it. Mr Berry's approach in connection with the public sector seems to be that you just whack a few beds in here and there, and it does not matter whether you really need to know how many you need as long as there is always enough. It does not matter if there are too many; it does not matter at all. That seemed to be the approach that he took when he was Minister. There was not any precision about what he did. He demonstrated that the whole system was totally out of control under his stewardship. He obviously had no idea how to control either the operation of the hospitals or the management of their budget, and yet he pretends to tell us now that he could do it better. He could not do it then; he could not do it now.
He keeps talking about a blow-out in the budget. The budget has not moved. Mr Humphries is quite right; you can say one cent, $1 or $100. I do not care what terms you use. At this stage there is no change in the budget that has been allocated for the hospital restructuring, and there will be no change.
I have made it quite clear that I am not prepared to see any add-ons to the program, and I am not prepared to see any blow-out in the program. The program can be managed; it is being managed; it will be managed within the amount of money that has been made available for it and within the timescale that has been set for it. Despite the wishful thinking on the part of members of the Opposition that it will blow out so that they can say, "I told you so", it will not happen.
I believe that the undertaking that this Government has given demonstrates its absolute commitment to the development of a strong, viable and accessible public health system, and by "accessible" we mean that when people need medical care it will be available to them. There is no diminution in the service now while this process is taking place; there will be no diminution of it once the process is complete and we are operating on a two-public hospital system. Of course, there will be supplementation in private hospitals. There is in every State in Australia. The ACT is unique in the low percentage of private sector beds that are provided as part of the hospital system. That means that the ACT taxpayers are paying more per capita for their hospital treatment and their health treatment than any other citizen pays anywhere else in Australia.
The Opposition seems to think that this is an acceptable position. Members of the Opposition seem to believe that there is something ideologically wrong with trying to
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