Page 449 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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Mr De Domenico: Put some sense into the argument, would you, Kate.
MRS CARNELL (3.36): I tell you what; it could not get worse, could it? My colleague Mr Westende has eloquently shown that the health budget is not under control, contrary to the quite remarkable statements that have just been made by Mr Berry.
Mr Connolly: Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. Mr De Domenico was consistently interjecting while Mr Berry was speaking, which was bad enough, but he is also consistently interjecting while Mrs Carnell is speaking. In the unlikely event that anyone on this side of the house was interested in listening to Mrs Carnell, they could not hear her over Mr De Domenico's interjections.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you for advising me of that. I will make sure that you can hear Mrs Carnell.
MRS CARNELL: That the budget blow-out is no better and probably worse, and that the situation has been the same and getting worse for the past three years, I think has been quite adequately shown by Mr Westende. In fact, just to refresh your memory, Mr Deputy Speaker, the blow-out to December 1990 was approximately $4.4m, to December 1991 it was $1.8m and to December 1992 it was $6.2m. This is a budget situation that is under control! Heaven help us!
Mr Westende also showed that the ACT has spent more money in real terms each year since Mr Berry took over the health ministry. Under normal circumstances it might be okay to spend more money on health due to an increasing and ageing population; unfortunately, this luxury is not available to the ACT. The Commonwealth Grants Commission has said that ACT Health is overfunded to the tune of $40m, even after taking into account fiscal equalisation principles. The Grants Commission has said that it expects the ACT to rein back its expenditure to be more in line with national averages over the next three years or so. Mr Berry has shown, unfortunately, absolutely no ability to bring the health budget under control. In fact, to digress slightly, the Grants Commission members themselves recognised the problems with activity levels increasing due to population levels increasing, and my understanding is that they gave us an extra $11m to address just those sorts of issues - something that Mr Berry seems to have forgotten very easily when it suited him.
Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Berry has spent nearly $13m more - and I stress more - in the first six months of this financial year. We have to look at what happened in the same six months in the previous financial year. I am sure that nobody has forgotten the closure of Royal Canberra Hospital. So he has spent $13m more than in the six-month period in the previous year and in a six-month period that included the closure of the hospital, a period which had a number of extraordinary expenses associated with the closure.
This Government closed Royal Canberra Hospital for the express purpose of becoming more efficient, to be able to do more for less, to improve the quality of service that was provided and to save money. This side also supported the closure of Royal Canberra Hospital; there is no doubt about that. We did that for the same reasons. We needed to be able to do more with less and to be able to continue to keep services up to the people of Canberra, knowing that we were going to have less money to deal with. I am sure that the current Government - and Mr Berry - made the decision for the same reasons.
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