Page 453 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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One of the improvements that have been evident over the past two years has been a significant reduction in the average length of stay in hospitals, achieved through increasing the use of day only surgery. This has reduced average costs of treatment and has permitted a higher level of service in the hospital system, as demonstrated by the most recent report by the Board of Health. Such developments will enable the Government to pursue a health budget that exploits greater efficiency and caters for higher levels of health service.
The status of the health budget has been fully disclosed in the Board of Health's quarterly reports. These reports also indicate the extent to which activity levels have increased as a result of policies to reduce the average length of stay in hospitals. Equally, we will maintain our commitment to improvement in efficiency and to ensuring that health, which is such a major part of the ACT budget, does contribute to the overall responsible budget approach that we have set. The record on this demonstrates the Government's success at delivering a responsible and low debt budget outcome for the people of the ACT. I think it is admirable that we have achieved such an outcome whilst maintaining our commitment to service delivery.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.55): Madam Speaker, I made comments this morning about the sorts of furphies and myths that were being perpetrated about the industrial relations battle in this country in the last few weeks, and it seems to me that much the same can be said about comments being made about health. I must say that, the more I hear a Labor politician talking about the more and more exaggerated claims of harm, of damage, to be done by a Hewson government, the more I think back to 1983 and to very similar sounding statements emanating from the lips of Liberal Ministers in those days when it was increasingly clear that a Labor government was on its way. I take that as a sign of some hope, frankly, that the present incumbents of our corridors of power are realising that they need to be rather more exaggerated in their claims in order to get some attention paid to their increasing fears and concerns about a change of government.
The fact of life is that very little of what either Mr Berry or Ms Follett has said to us today about health in the ACT, or nationally, is true; it is a succession of untrue statements. First of all, I will take what Mr Berry said, Madam Speaker. Assertions about ACT budget history really are quite wrong for a man who has spent longer in that seat than anybody else. I am surprised that either he or his advisers could not get the right figures and facts down on paper when they were preparing his speech for today. The fact is that there was not, for example, $17m worth of supplementation provided to the budget for health when the Alliance Government and I were in power.
Ms Follett: Mrs Carnell thought there was. Yes, "the bad old days of $17m" is what you said.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry said, "$17m supplementation". It is untrue on two counts: The supplementation was $11m and supplementation, as this Government argues all the time, is fair enough. Supplementation is all about giving the system the money that it deserves because it is facing some problems which are, to quote the Chief Minister's words, "outside ACT Government control". If that is the case, the $17m claim on the part of this Government really falls rather flat because precisely the same sources of supplementation have been relied upon by them in government. A strict comparison is not the before supplementation figure; it is the after supplementation figure, and the fact of life is that this Government does not compare very well.
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