Page 4113 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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Madam Speaker, it would show also that the Ambulance Service continues to respond to a majority of priority one calls in less than 10 minutes. That is the national average response time that is required, and we are there. It would show also that the number of commendations received by Woden Valley and Calvary public hospitals was greater than the number of complaints received by over four to one. Of course, members opposite do not want to know about any of that good news. Obviously, some people in this system have been working extraordinarily hard and extraordinarily effectively in a difficult time.
Madam Speaker, if we are talking about a crisis today, it is one that has been forced on us by the actions of the visiting medical officers. It is not a crisis of the Government's making. Indeed, Madam Speaker, the circumstances that we face today are circumstances that we have worked very hard to avoid, and we will continue to work hard on this issue. It would have been very easy for the Government to avoid or end this dispute simply by giving in to the VMOs' demands, but the public of the Territory, I believe, must realise just what those demands are. They are not demands for fair rates of pay. We have agreed already to what are, by national standards, very generous rates. What the VMOs are demanding is full automatic indexation of those generous rates of pay and tenure; and not only tenure but tenure on their terms. Although they are contractors, they want security of tenure that even our own employees, our own permanent public servants, do not have. They want those terms whether ACT Health needs them on those terms or whether it does not. It is not a reasonable position and, clearly, it would be totally irresponsible to the ACT taxpayer to agree to such terms.
All of us in the ACT have to face the fact that there have been dramatic changes in our financial relationship with the Commonwealth, and the Grants Commission's five-yearly review of relativities resulted in a very significant reassessment of the levels of Commonwealth funds provided to the Territory. Madam Speaker, we have dealt elsewhere with the reduction in that general revenue grant. Suffice it to say that there is now a much lower level of funding in our general revenue grant than we anticipated at this time last year, and our health budget has been framed against this background. If the Government were to accede to the VMOs' demand we would have to rob Peter in order to pay an already very well-paid Paul. We cannot print money. Other important government services would lose out, which would impact on the ACT community. If we were simply to spend, spend, spend, as the Opposition seems to demand - "all it takes is money", we have heard Mrs Carnell say - then the Territory would go into a spiral of debt which, again, would penalise the whole community.
Let us look at what we are achieving with our limited health budget and put the VMOs' demands into context. Over recent years we have increased our public health services dramatically, with hospital admissions increasing by 5.3 per cent in 1992-93 alone. People receiving day only care increased by 9.3 per cent. This year the Government is aiming to maintain those activity levels. We are funding expansion and growth in community and public health services, and the hospital redevelopment project has passed the halfway mark, as I said. The hospital has been accredited and it will soon commence as a teaching hospital. This is a further new and important step towards a health system of excellence. At the same time, with the progressive completion of the redevelopment project, we have the potential for further efficiency returns.
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