Page 4405 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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tourism; yet what do we see? The one industry that is capable of maintaining some level of stability and continuing to produce jobs and continuing to produce revenue for the Territory is the one which takes a massive cut in its funding.
I know that it can be argued that there was a $1m one-off provision there that goes back two years, and that at some time in the future it might have been arguable and justifiable that that $1m should be removed from their budget, but hardly this year. I think that is where the Government has failed. In this year, of all years, the Tourism Commission should have been left to get on with its job. What we have seen as a result of that massive reduction in funding is that a very competent executive officer is lost to us, apart from anything else. The tourism industry seems to be somewhat in chaos because they do not know where their future lies, or to what degree this Government supports them - and words are not good enough. There has to be some action that supports the words.
I guess the next problem that concerned me, Mr Speaker, was the obfuscation on the question of consultants. This Government has said that it is reducing the use of consultants this year by 25 per cent. It is very hard to prove whether that is true or untrue, because when you look at the budget you find the words "consultants" and "contractors" used almost interchangeably, and they are not the same thing. You never can be sure whether consultants and/or contractors are being used to supplement staff or to replace the so-called staff reductions that are alleged to be on the books. One finds it very difficult to find out just what the ultimate objective is, what the cost reductions are, if any, to the taxpayer, and how it is all going to work out at the end of the year.
The use of consultants must relate to your staffing formula, and very often there was a suspicion that staff are letting out to consultants and contractors the very work that they themselves should be doing, and that all the staff is doing is supervising consultants. I think it is an area that requires further attention. The Estimates Committee concentrated on that as one of their specific areas of review this year and I think it is one that we will probably look at again next year to see how it all worked out.
I think the most vulnerable area in the Government's budget is the health budget. I have said before, and I will say it again, that I think this budget is a fragile budget; but the most fragile part of it is the health budget. I suspect that it is already beginning to fall apart. It is obvious that Calvary Hospital is struggling to maintain services within the allocation that has been made to them. There seem to be difficulties at Woden in coping with the transfer of functions from Royal Canberra Hospital North to the Royal Canberra Hospital at Woden.
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