Page 4114 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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This will be very helpful as we look at bringing services more into line with national standards and benchmarks. After all, Madam Speaker, the ACT receives Commonwealth funding based on national standards. We are paid for the considerable number of NSW patients in our hospitals at national standard rates. We cannot afford excesses.
It is not just our budgetary circumstances that require us to apply to the VMOs the same kind of disciplines that are being followed throughout the ACT. The Auditor-General, Madam Speaker, also has recommended a thorough overhaul of the arrangements under which VMOs are engaged and the way in which they operate within the public health system. In other words, sound management practice and careful use of public funds demand that there be significant reforms in the current arrangements. Madam Speaker, is the Opposition asking that we ignore the Auditor-General as well as the constraints created by the Territory's overall budgetary circumstances?
In talking about the current dispute we must not lose sight of the quite proper steps that have been taken by the Government to avoid this dispute and to settle it once it became clear that the VMOs were withdrawing their services. Negotiations with the VMOs commenced many months ago, in fact in June, and I understand that four meetings with the full VMO negotiating team took place, together with a further six working party meetings. In addition, the Minister has met with representatives of the VMOs. In all this time I understand that the VMOs have shown little flexibility and have made only one concession relating to on-call rates. For its part, the Government has made significant concessions, and, in particular, we have modified our offer on rates of pay. Against this history of negotiations conducted with great care and in good faith, the criticism that the Government has precipitated the current dispute is absolutely bankrupt.
Madam Speaker, in concluding I would like to say that in the face of severe overall funding restraints the Government has taken the only course available to us. We have asked the VMOs to share some of the discipline that is being imposed throughout the ACT public sector. We have not asked the VMOs to do more than their share. Indeed, and I stress this, if we have erred it is on the side of generosity. Madam Speaker, I would like to quote very briefly, and this is a rare thing for me, from the Canberra Business Council's submission for the budget this year in regard to the VMOs. They said:
The Committee understands that contracts with VMOs are to be re-negotiated in September 1993. A realistic approach should be determined by the ACT Government ...
It goes on and on and towards the end they say:
Just as the ACT followed the Macken judgment in 1986, it should now follow the recent New South Wales judgment for a 20 per cent reduction.
That is the Business Council's view on what the Government should have offered the VMOs. Of course, that is not what we offered them. As I say, if we erred, it was on the side of generosity. At the same time, Madam Speaker, we have acted honourably as the negotiations have proceeded. Any crisis caused by the withdrawal of VMO services is not of the Government's making.
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