Page 295 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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currently run by government will also create great opportunities for business in Canberra and will create real job opportunities for our young people.
Fightback also contains a package of health reforms which will greatly improve health care in the ACT as well as in the rest of Australia. Pensioners will be given private health insurance free of charge, and health insurance will be made substantially more attractive for all other ACT residents. This will dramatically reduce the pressure on our overstressed public hospital system and also improve our revenue base - something that I am sure Mr Berry would be very pleased to hear.
Ms Follett says that her Government is committed to providing the highest possible standard of accessible and affordable health care for the people of the ACT. I wonder whether the 2,000 people on our hospital waiting lists believe her. I also wonder whether the large number of Canberrans who have to seek hospital treatment outside the ACT believe that Ms Follett's health system is accessible. She talks about better financial management and accountability but still has not implemented full accrual accounting in the health system - something that is regarded as essential for good management, something that Coopers and Lybrand last year placed as a priority, a No. 1 priority, for our health system. We are still in the process of implementing Fiscal, a cash based accounting package.
It would seem that Ms Follett's Government believes that across-the-board cuts to all services in the health arena, including bed numbers, somehow equates to good financial management. What does constitute good financial management is program based management, appropriate targeting of resources, using all the resources available, including the private sector, and instituting performance agreements with all service providers. This assures quality within our health system.
The Chief Minister again promises public health facilities for the Acton Peninsula. I am sure that many Canberrans are asking: When? Ms Follett's plans for the Acton Peninsula appear to be haphazard, to say the least. It would appear at the moment that Canberra will have a hospice for those with terminal illnesses, a convalescent facility for those hoping to get better, and possibly QEII, a home for new mums with young babies, all adjacent to each other, regardless of where the most appropriate location for them may be.
I am sure that the Chief Minister is aware that the committee set up last year to look at the most appropriate site for the hospice recommended Calvary Hospital. Why is the Chief Minister not accepting the advice of experts? Is it that she wishes to avoid making any hard decisions on the future of Acton? The inquiry set up to look at the future of Acton has still not reported. Why?
I am very pleased that the Chief Minister has promised to increase the number of child-care places. Let us hope that these new places will be made available at Tuggeranong, where there is a desperate need, not in the inner south as has recently been the case. This decision to put child-care places in the inner south, where there are already vacancies, shows a lack of direction, a propensity to make politically expedient decisions and a great need to use up schools that they do not know what else to do with. In finishing, may I urge the Chief Minister to dispense with her motherhood statements and address the very real problems besetting the ACT.
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