Page 1792 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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Mrs Carnell: Why have they not fixed it already?
MR DE DOMENICO: That is a good question, Mrs Carnell. Why have they not fixed it already? I am going to be the devil's advocate on this occasion. Prior to Mr Connolly being handed the health portfolio and prior to Mr Lamont becoming the Minister for Industrial Relations, those two portfolios were handled by the one Minister, former Minister Berry. I agree with all the previous speakers that the best way to fix our hospital budget problem is to work in a bipartisan way. Working in a bipartisan way means that both sides of the political fence must throw away their ideology and inject a good dose of commonsense into the whole situation.
There have been five reports into the health system over the past five years and they all happen to say the same thing. One would think, notwithstanding what one's political ideologies might be from time to time, that one would tend to listen to the experts in the field. It seems to me that all the experts in the field are saying, "Listen, we have to make sure that we get more value for the dollar that we are spending in our health system". There is no denying the fact that, dollar for dollar, we spent 30 per cent more than the national average on our health system. Obviously there is something that we can do about that. I agree that the best way out of that is by doing it in a bipartisan way.
I am suggesting also, Mr Deputy Speaker, that no-one who is interested in fixing our health system views public and private health in the same simplistic way as Mr Berry did. That is good news. It is great news. It is refreshing to find out that Mr Connolly has realised that the best way of helping things out is to blend private and public. The day when private hospitals, for example, were simply the playground for the rich, privileged doctors, according to Mr Berry, is as long past as a Health Minister who could not bear to talk about private health at all. That is a refreshing view. Perhaps the most dramatic change in the way health is being run in the ACT was made when Mr Connolly was made Health Minister. It took this Assembly to make that dramatic change, after five years. I believe that it is something we can be very proud of.
I say again that a real partnership can alleviate some of the enormous pressure on our public hospital system and ensure that more people are treated sooner rather than later in the ACT. We have to remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that in the ACT we have the highest percentage of privately insured patients but the lowest number of private beds per capita in the country. I also urge the Minister to consider the possibilities offered by some economies of scale in health. We have heard nothing about economies of scale from Mr Connolly. By that I mean that he should do what Mr Berry also failed to consider, and that is to look seriously beyond the border to New South Wales and its health infrastructure. If we think that our health system with a $260m budget is big, Mr Deputy Speaker, we have to think again. The New South Wales health budget is approximately $5 billion. Ours pales into insignificance. Surely, Mr Deputy Speaker, we should be looking at our role as the major hospital in the region, not as an island surrounded by smaller New South Wales facilities. Some limited sharing of resources at the very least would provide economies of scale.
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