Page 1075 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously either Mr Berry was wrong or Mr Connolly is wrong now. I have no doubt, Madam Speaker, that Mr Connolly is absolutely right to permit that expansion. I will come back to say something about the consequences of that kind of expansion for ACT Health and, in particular, for women who are having babies in this Territory.
Madam Speaker, it is all about the approach that is taken here and the willingness to acknowledge the nature of problems and to do something about them based on a frankness and an openness of mind. Mr Connolly might not be too happy about our damning him with this sort of praise. He may well feel that the kiss of death is being bestowed with these kinds of comments. But I have to say that these comments are more important or that this debate is more important than merely the position of Minister A versus Minister B. It is a question about how we provide a way out of the really serious mess that our health system is in.
I concede a point that Mr Connolly also made. The problems in Health are not just about actions of particular governments. They are institutional problems; they are problems that are inherent in the very nature of health care in Australia in the 1990s. But I feel some confidence that some of the things the Minister has said and some of the approaches he has taken will lead to solutions - at least partial solutions - based on commonsense.
Mr Connolly made the important point, which has often been made, not just by him, that there are not enough dollars in the system; that we do not have the resources to do everything we want to do in health. Indeed, we do not. He posed the question, "What is the Liberals' solution?". Madam Speaker, let me put it on the record once again - as if it had not been put often enough by Mrs Carnell. One of the most important solutions that this Government can pursue is to properly utilise the possibilities of private medicine and private hospital care in this Territory. Those options have been systematically limited, and even excluded, by this Government until last week. They simply eschewed an important area of possible resourcing for health care in this Territory.
There are many people in this Territory - in this place, outside this place and all over the Territory - who have high levels of private health insurance but who cannot use those high levels of private health insurance because there are not the facilities for them to use. Any decision which is made to exploit the capacity to let people who can afford it bear a larger burden of their own health costs is obviously a way of taking pressure off our public hospital system and is a very important measure.
Another important way in which money can be saved is by making sure that the Government does not get involved any more than it has to in the provision of services. There are some areas in which, quite frankly, others can do things better than can the Government. I will not make any contrast between the running of Calvary Hospital and the running of Woden Valley Hospital, but I will draw attention to another small but important facility funded by the public but run by a non-government organisation. I am referring here to the QEII Hospital for mothers and babies. There were a number of callers to our health hotline who were distressed at the prospect that the QEII Hospital was under threat either of closure or of being subsumed under the banner of ACT Health and losing the independence which it has under the Mothercraft Society.
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