Page 250 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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I really cannot finish without making some comments about day surgery. Day surgery seems to both Mr Howe and Mr Berry to be the panacea for health in Australia. Day surgery is all very well. Day surgery is a very good incentive. Mind you, I was very interested to hear Mr Howe quote American figures on day surgery. I think it might be the first time that Mr Howe has ever suggested that the American system of health care is a very good one.
Day surgery has the capacity to do very good things for health in Australia, but it will not achieve them quickly. Day surgery requires good domiciliary care. Mr Berry very successfully has cut funding to community nursing and to other community health facilities. So, if he is looking at day surgery solving the problems in our health system, he is sadly mistaken. Day surgery is a very useful part of improving the throughput of health in Australia; but with day surgery you have to have the guts in the first instance to reduce staff at your hospitals, and in the long term to reduce bed numbers.
Unfortunately, Mr Berry got it round the wrong way. He reduced bed numbers and kept the staff, which probably negates the whole thing in the ACT. It seems that day surgery is not going to save health in the ACT, and it certainly appears that the Special Premiers Conference did not do anything to save it. So, let us look at micro-economic reform in health in Australia.
MR MOORE (4.24): I thought I would make a comment and speak to the amendment. I will not support the amendment that Mr Kaine has presented because - - -
Mr Kaine: You disappoint me, Michael.
MR MOORE: I am aware that I may well disappoint Mr Kaine. That has happened before, and no doubt it will happen again on many occasions. The difficulty is that it seems to me that, by and large, a motion to take note of a paper is, in fact, a polite way of allowing the Assembly to comment on that paper. I appreciate the fact that that politeness is allowed. We have had a number of wrangles in the Assembly over that very politeness. Ministers in the previous Alliance Government and Ministers in all three Labor-led Governments have, by and large, allowed their papers to be debated by moving that motion to take note of the paper.
I think the most important comment in the statement made by Ms Follett today is her comment on page 3, where she said:
One particular matter I raised with the Prime Minister was my concern to protect the level of services to the ACT community. I believe that the Commonwealth must guarantee a realistic level of funding to all States and Territories to enable us to continue to deliver the services for which we are responsible.
That is quite right and quite appropriate. Unfortunately, the statement that undermines that and that, I think, is quite foreboding for the future of the ACT is this:
I should add, however, that the Commonwealth set out in very clear terms its own financial pressures and the problems it is grappling with.
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