Page 2017 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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from this year's budget adjustments can be made to accommodate it. But it is too early yet to say whether it is necessary in connection with that $6m, or where the offsetting adjustment will be required to be made.
MS FOLLETT: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I note the Treasurer's remarks about the use of the Treasurer's Advance. I would ask as a follow-up to that: Mr Kaine, do you support Mr Humphries' call for a bigger health budget in the next financial year, or do you intend to continue to use the Treasurer's Advance to prop up these budget overflows? If you do support an increase in the health budget in the next financial year, will you be doing so only because of the total failure to control this budget and, in fact, to save your Minister, not to mention yourself as Treasurer, from further embarrassment?
MR KAINE: No, I do not accept that there needs to be a bigger health budget, Mr Speaker. In fact, all of the evidence from successive Grants Commission inquiries would suggest that we are already expending more on health than any other community in Australia and that there would be just reason for adjusting downwards. That is the very reason why we are embarking on a hospitals restructuring program, amongst other things, to get our expenditure on health down to a reasonable level, while at the same time at least maintaining and hopefully enhancing the delivery of services to the community through that system.
What that means, Mr Speaker, is that there is this one-time adjustment that has to be made and - I make the point again - this is obviously the result of years of accumulated mismanagement. It did not occur just in the last year. In fact, as Mr Berry well knows, there were strong signs that the management was out of control when he was the Minister. So, it is not something that has happened just this year. It is the result of years of lack of management, lack of management systems and lack of management control within the health system. What the Government has done is move to rectify the management, to put in place proper management systems and to put in place proper management controls.
The budget base for the health system next year will not be last year's base inflated by $11m or $17m, or whatever the ultimate adjustment figure is. It will be last year's base. I will be looking, as any prudent Treasurer in these hard times is looking - and, if you do not believe me, go and ask the Treasurer of Victoria - not to increase the health budget - - -
Mr Connolly: The Treasurer of New South Wales might have some interesting thoughts at the moment, if he is still the Treasurer.
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