Page 3208 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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MRS CARNELL: Now we know. Where is the funding for this much needed unit this year?
Mr De Domenico: It is in the land program of Mr Wood.
MRS CARNELL: It is obviously not in the health one. This morning I was advised by concerned specialists that this budget, by not addressing the cardiac unit, will mean that 400 to 500 people are likely to be affected in the next 12 months and that six intensive care beds specially designed for cardiac patients are now not going to be used for the purpose they were designed for. I have been told that this ridiculous situation is also likely to mean that two specialists will now leave Canberra. They said that, in relation to health, Canberra is losing its credibility interstate. We are being treated as a joke, to quote the specialists involved.
It would seem that Canberrans will continue to have to go to Sydney for bypass surgery. In fact, more than one Canberran every day of the year is forced to leave their home and family and have life-saving surgery in Sydney. It is no wonder that these people and their families and friends do not believe that this is a social justice budget. Yet we continue to go ahead with a 17-bed $3m hospice on Acton Peninsula, despite quite clear expert evidence that it can be done at Calvary for at least $2m less, not to mention reduced recurrent costs. Despite hospital waiting lists and the fact that many Canberrans will have to leave town for important and basic health treatment, the Government is still pushing ahead with its $100,000 publicly funded abortion clinic. We know that the majority of Canberrans would much rather have as a priority basic health services or a cut in waiting lists than a government funded private abortion clinic. Where is the listening to the community argument in this decision?
This Government will bulldoze through its own factional agenda at any cost and with little regard to the needs and wants of average Canberrans. This budget is proof of that. This Government has a first-class record in looking after mates at the expense of proper financial management. Let us take a look at the evidence. In September last year, that is 12 months ago, after the 1992-93 budget the Canberra Times editorial said of the budget that it is "the work of a government that is incompetent or paralysed, or both". Ian Davis of the Canberra Times said 12 months ago:
... its weakness is that it contains virtually no real decisions at all.
You could use exactly the same lines for this budget and you would be equally close to the mark. The Canberra Times editorial this year was no more complimentary when it said:
The people of the ACT continue to get less for more.
If the same borrowing policy is to be relied on more and more, our children will be getting even less for even more. The editorial went on to say:
It is not exactly a recipe for asking for a renewed mandate.
The editorial was wrong. It should have said, "It is no recipe at all for a renewed mandate". Crispin Hull added his weight when he said:
If the ACT had any steel, it would join the rust-belt States.
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