Page 452 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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These comparisons continually confirm the highly responsible approach that my Government is taking to the budget pressures that are placed on the ACT. We have a commitment to combining responsible budgeting with social justice. We are succeeding on both, whereas the Opposition could achieve neither when they were in government. We have taken very difficult decisions in confronting the high costs of the system we inherited which have been shown over many years through the Grants Commission comparisons. Adjustments have been made in all areas to meet these pressures, including major restructuring of hospital services.
The Government has made and will continue to make the investment that is necessary to enable health services to operate in an efficient manner. We have committed all the necessary capital resources, including over $170m to the hospital redevelopment project. Health is recognised in all jurisdictions as being a most complex area of the budget; it is not an area amenable to simplistic solutions. I would suggest to members that Dr Hewson's solution of handing over the control and most of the money to the doctors is a simplistic solution which will not work. In the last two budgets ACT Health has been required to achieve, and it has achieved, major efficiency savings. Supplementation to the health budget has been based on agreed criteria and has been closely monitored.
Madam Speaker, my Government gave explicit recognition under the business rules to the costs imposed on health because of the national trend of a decline in the proportion of private to public patients in hospitals. This trend has been acknowledged in the Medicare agreement after significant negotiation and the Territory is assured of gaining at least $21m from that agreement, thereby relieving some of the considerable pressure on the Territory's budget and giving us some small breathing space to confront what will be a continuing squeeze on it. It is a squeeze which is expected to be infinitely tighter if it is the Fightback package which is implemented.
The Opposition continually criticised the Government, the Board of Health and the health program itself last year for the supplementation provided for the changes in patient mix. Such criticism has now been shown to be unjustified. It failed to recognise cost pressures on the health system which are outside management or State or Territory government control. The impact of these issues has now been recognised by all governments at Commonwealth and State level, including the political colleagues of those opposite, and by all political parties in the new Medicare funding agreement.
The Assembly and the community as a whole have cause for concern about the implications for health funding of the Federal coalition's Fightback policies. Fightback, as I have said, will slash funding to public hospitals. It promises escalating health costs along the lines of the American health system under which health care will be based on a person's wealth and not on their health needs. In that context, the Opposition's criticism of my Government's policies is particularly ill founded. The ACT health system has made significant advances in health care and health delivery, notwithstanding the major restructuring which is being undertaken.
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