Page 446 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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I do welcome this opportunity to discuss the financial management of ACT Health. The matter of public importance brought forward by the Opposition infers that this Labor Government has not confronted the health funding problems, and the fact that it has been raised demonstrates that the Opposition has a very poor understanding of the actual business of health. The Liberals' difficulty lies in the fact that they are unable to understand the complexity of health management; in other words, they do not understand what health is about. It is different from running the corner pharmacy; it is much different. Managing health relies on more than just an accounting of dollars and coming in on budget. It incorporates much wider issues such as managing hospital and community services, activity levels and ensuring that not only adequate but progressive services are available to our community. The Liberals' own record in government demonstrates the reality of my contention, and I will provide some figures to illustrate the point.
In 1991 the health budget received supplementation of $17m, of which $6m was for unauthorised expenditure. One is tempted to ask whether accountability screening for management was a priority, given the level of unauthorised funding. The most important feature of that was that the Treasurer did not know what was going on and did not care, and neither did the Health Minister of the day, Mr Humphries. That was the important feature of this. Since then a great level of effort has been put into taking this thing in hand, and it is achieving success.
We cannot control the number of people who turn up to our hospitals needing attention. When in government the Liberals provided no direction or control of health finances in relation to the services they were responsible for providing to the community. The snowballing effect of spending in the portfolio was not related to increasing services to greater numbers of people within the ACT; rather, it was the result of inefficient and ineffective management, and the Liberals were simply unable to come to terms with it. When Labor came to government we inherited a health system with the potential to be the best in Australia, but it was reeling under the weight of mismanagement by the Liberals.
Our policy of ensuring that the community receives the maximum value for its health dollar and that no section of the community should be disadvantaged in its access to appropriate health care has meant that the Labor Government has required a much tighter and more responsible approach to the management of health. Labor has in fact put the health system back together, and our record speaks for itself. That health is becoming progressively more effectively managed is shown in the efficiency measures that have been implemented and which have resulted in savings of greater than $15m as at December 1992. Hospital admissions are ahead by 5.5 per cent on the same period last year. Day case admissions are up by 12.3 per cent. So the Assembly can see that what health is now doing is providing more services for less money.
The provision of services has also expanded. On Tuesday of this week, as I said, it was my very great pleasure, in conjunction with my Federal colleague Mrs Ros Kelly, to open the ACT mammography clinic. It will provide free breast screening services to women of the Territory. That was a jointly funded program - $1.18m each from the Federal and Territory governments for that program. That is the sort of joint funding money that we are going to have a great deal of difficulty finding when $17m is cut out of the ACT budget - if it were to happen.
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