Page 404 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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AUSTRALIAN HEALTH MINISTERS CONFERENCE
Ministerial Statement
MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (3.02): Madam Speaker, I seek leave to make a ministerial statement on the Australian Health Ministers Conference held on 14 April 1992.
Leave granted.
Mr Humphries: Did you tell us about that?
Ms Follett: Ask your Whip.
Mr Humphries: He says no.
Mr De Domenico: It was on the draft program this morning, I must admit. It is not on the green program.
MADAM SPEAKER: Whether you know about it or not, Mr De Domenico, Mr Berry is about to make the statement. Would you go ahead please, Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: Does this mean that all of a sudden we have six prepared speeches again?
Madam Speaker, the recent Australian Health Ministers Conference which I attended discussed a range of issues, some of which I feel will be of interest to members of the Assembly. You may be aware that the Medicare agreement, through which we get part of our hospital funding, is due to run out at the end of the next financial year. The ACT, along with other States and Territories, is concerned that the new agreement address some of the threshold issues concerning the general trend in Commonwealth-State financial relations over the past decade.
The main threshold issue is the overall quantum of funds provided by the Commonwealth to the States and Territories. The States and Territories have progressively been funding a greater proportion of the overall quantum of funds provided by the Commonwealth to the States and Territories. This is against a background, I should say, of a decline in real terms of financial assistance grants and increasing restrictions on Loan Council borrowings. The ACT gets about $50m for the Medicare grant, which, as members who have followed this would know, falls far short of the $156m or so that it costs to run the three public hospitals - Woden, Calvary and QEII.
There is also a need for the Commonwealth to contribute in a much more substantive way to the capital requirements of hospitals, particularly for upgrading and maintenance of capital equipment and buildings. The Commonwealth has indicated a willingness to discuss this issue as part of ongoing negotiations. The Health Ministers have referred the threshold issues of the overall quantum of funds and the associated role and responsibilities of each level of government to the Premiers-Chief Ministers forum.
In renegotiating the Medicare agreement, both the Commonwealth and the States are committed to advancing structural reform within the Australian health system. The majority of Health Ministers concurred with a negotiating framework which included working towards more concrete objectives and outcomes for new funding arrangements; working towards area-based planning
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