Page 1016 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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the Government's hospital closure program. The mishandling of the Alliance Government's attempt to dismantle the public health system is costing the people of Canberra dearly. This cost is not only in the loss of service but also in forcing people into the expensive private health system as public beds decrease and waiting lists increase.
The mishandling of the Government's program is costing the people of Canberra in financial terms as well. We have the Hunt Boilers dispute. The blame for the cost of this dispute must lie fully at the feet of the Minister for Urban Services - a Minister who is not even competent enough to ensure that the commitments he does make are honoured; a Minister who has said in this Assembly that he did not even know what his commitments in this regard were but he "was satisfied" that they were being implemented.
Such blow-outs are significant enough without taking into account the fact that the original hospital restructuring budget did not even include estimates for a large number of unavoidable transitional costs and the provision of necessary facilities such as car parks.
The Minister keeps assuring us that the hospital redevelopment is on budget, but I predict that that budget will be a moving target. The blow-outs in the hospital closure program may end up being insignificant compared to the failure of the Government to keep the actual hospital budget in check. The Government has already admitted that it is running almost $12m over budget, and that figure grows every time the Government makes a statement on it.
The Minister knew about the budget problems at the end of 1989. I ask what action he took. The answer is glaringly obvious: He took no action whatsoever. The Minister has admitted that he did not even bother to ask for a progress report on the budget before he went on his extended European vacation. To this we must add the remarks of the Auditor-General in a truly astonishing report, a report that quite clearly illustrates that financial management, or what there is of it, is in a shambles. If the Auditor-General finds that financial accountability in this Government is in a mess, how can we assume that even the most diligent Treasury officer can produce accurate forward estimates? With all of these factors at work, I ask: How can this Assembly assume that the forward estimates are, in Mr Kaine's words, simply a factual statement?
Even more critically, how can the forward estimates be a factual statement when the Treasurer himself does not even consider the budget factual? He has stated that the Appropriation Bills passed by this Assembly are merely budget estimates of expenditure. On this basis I suggest that we should retitle the forward estimates and call them the forward guesstimates. Even if we accept that they may have been a factual statement of the Government's hopes at one stage, I doubt their accuracy now for anything other than general trends.
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