Page 4107 - Week 15 - Thursday, 17 December 1992
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Madam Speaker, as I indicated, the Opposition is making a significant concession. We are willing to accept for the Government to present financial information quarterly instead of on a monthly basis as in the previous Assembly. I am glad that the Minister has indicated that he will provide accurate and detailed information on a quarterly basis in the future. But he must make another concession to accountability and provide the same information for the recent September quarter.
There are a lot of good reasons for wanting this information. It is not just a political stunt, as I have heard the Minister say. We know, everyone who knows anything about Health knows, that there are some disturbing trends in place in ACT Health. For instance, when the budget was presented this year the percentage of private patients entering the system was 32.7 per cent. The figure in the September quarter activity reports was 29.5 per cent. It appears that many of the people who are going into our public hospitals as public patients are people who may well hold private insurance but have chosen not to declare their private insurance status. Others may be people who a few years ago did have such insurance but have abandoned it because they feel that the benefit of keeping such insurance is marginal at best.
We discussed this at length earlier this week. These changes in patient mix, forced by the counterproductive policies of Federal and local Labor governments, obviously have an impact on hospital finances. It means less revenue for the hospital system, and that in turn means less money available to spend on public patients. The financial black hole left by a declining number of private patients also means that Treasury has had to provide supplementation under the business rules - over $4m last year.
The financial statistics presented by the Minister must be of a standard which can reflect these kinds of developments. During the Estimates Committee hearing the Minister indicated that he had not planned for any changes in the level of activity in the hospital system. In his words, he expected activity to be about the same, but he hoped, as he said yesterday, to do better. Since then, of course, we have seen activity levels rise, and no doubt the Minister again will be seeking Treasury supplementation for this, or possibly ACT Health will be able, as he said yesterday, to see more patients for the same money. Again, financial information presented by ACT Health must bear this out. Instead, the financial data which was provided in the September quarter was almost non-existent and one had no hope of being able to trace such developments.
Madam Speaker, Health is an extremely important area. It amounts to some 25 per cent of the local budget. It is an area where, at the very least, some minimum standards of financial accountability must be met. In September the Minister completely failed to do this. That is what this motion calls for - detailed information on a quarterly basis; the information which was presented to the last Assembly and which must be presented again. I commend this motion to the house.
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