Page 3854 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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managed in the past, and there is less money to go around. We have to make do with less. As was set out in the budget papers, significant amounts of money have been taken out of the health budget in the ACT, and health management have to work hard to make sure that they do their business more efficiently.
That is no easy task; but I think that when it comes down to it we have to accept that we will be bearing more of the responsibility for health services, we will have to negotiate harder with the Commonwealth, and we will have to do things differently in the public system. Our managers are currently doing that. We are working through a very difficult budget year. Expenditure in the recent past has been up, and we have to do things which regulate our expenditure in the system. At the same time, there is no doubt that waiting lists have been a difficulty for every public hospital in Australia. They are a difficulty for us, and it is not one that is going to go away overnight.
Mr Humphries: They have doubled here, which is more than anywhere else.
MR BERRY: They were very low in the ACT when Labor was in office in 1989. They almost doubled up to the period of the Alliance Government, and they have grown since. Nobody can deny that. Nobody would want that to happen, and it is something that we have to work on. But people are not going back to the private sector, because there is no attraction for them to do it. If the private sector think that they need to do a bit of marketing, that is not something that I am going to control. It is entirely up to them. It is not something that I can control. We have to work to provide public hospital services as people walk away from the private sector, and we will continue to do that as far as we can with the money that we are provided with.
MR KAINE: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. The Minister took over five minutes to outline the very problem that I put to him, but he did not answer the question of what he intended to do about it. Do I have to conclude, then, that the Minister is going to throw his hands up in the air and do nothing while our health system deteriorates?
MR BERRY: What Mr Kaine said is not true. I told him very clearly that we are going to manage our health system differently and do things more efficiently.
Mr Humphries: Manage better! What sort of answer is that?
MR BERRY: Mr Humphries would suggest that we do what he did - abandon the whole show. We will manage the way we do business in the health system better. We have proven that we can do that. At the same time, we will take advantage of the extra money that has been provided to us by the Commonwealth to address waiting lists. Furthermore, we will also work, in the debate over the new Medicare agreement, to ensure that the ACT gets a better deal.
Mr Kaine: What - better than the one you signed yourself up for?
Mr Humphries: You have already signed the agreement.
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