Page 2085 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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What Mr Kaine said is true. There has been one attempt at major restructuring, and that was the one that he made over the Royal Canberra Hospital, which was an absolute disaster. Nevertheless, it was an attempt at restructuring, and it was an attempt, in the initial instance, to actually do something. But I must say that, apart from that particular issue, it was the same story with the Alliance Government. I will come back to that when I deal with the Liberal alternative budget in a short while.
I think it is fair to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that Ms Szuty, in her speech, raised a whole series of questions and presented a point of view that very carefully explained where both she and I are coming from. It is also interesting to note that, in the meeting that she and I had with the Chief Minister prior to the budget, we suggested that if she was going to look at an area for savings she should look at the Economic Development Division. I will come back to that later when I deal with the alternative budget. We hear again and again from the dry economic rationalists the argument that you must ensure a very tight administration, that you must ensure that savings are going to be made. What I say to them is, "If we are going to start with savings being made, let us start with your area. Let us start with the Economic Development Division. Let us start with tourism. Let us start with your support to small business. That is what you want". I am going to come back to that when I deal with the Liberal alternative budget, because what they want to do is to increase expenditure on that area. It is a question of priorities. My suggestion to the Chief Minister was that that is the area where we should decrease expenditure and basically hand it over to the business sector to look after themselves.
Before I move on to the alternative budget I want to reiterate a couple of things that were raised by Ms Szuty, and the first of those is to do with schools. We are in a relieved frame of mind, now that there is no cut to government schooling. We think that that is a good thing. But compare that to the fact that in non-government schooling we get a 1.7 per cent rise per capita. I would like the Chief Minister to explain why she set those priorities. I understand that there may be some Federal Government influence in that area. The reality is that we now see a widening gap between expenditure on government schooling and expenditure on non-government schooling, and I think that that will add to inequity rather than enhance social justice.
It is also important for us to look at the issue of health. When we look carefully at the Arthur Andersen report in terms of health - Mrs Carnell spent a lot of time talking about benchmarking, and I will come back to that too - we know that expenditure in the health area is basically at the standard level across Australia when we are talking about service delivery. It is the administrative costs in the ACT that are extraordinarily overexpended. I think it is very important for us to look at that area, and I think that the Government has not adequately addressed that with the increase in funding to Health. That increase in funding does not go to service delivery but goes instead into what I might call the bottomless pit of administration.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the other issue that I think is particularly important here is employment. We are now coming out of a recession and it is time for us to try to enhance the employment opportunities of the people of the ACT. The ACT is still primarily a public service town. It may well be that by getting efficiencies in administration we can transfer the money, and we ought to be able to transfer that money to employ people at the service end of the Government Service. Increases in efficiency do not necessarily
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