Page 2086 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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mean that we should cut funding to the public service, as some would interpret suggestions made in the alternative budget. Mr Kaine talked about preserving the good things about Canberra; but it seems to me that you cannot continually cut and cut, as the Liberals suggest, and still preserve the good things and the best things about Canberra.
That leads me to the alternative budget that has been presented. At least we can see the Liberals' priorities. But their priorities are set to ensure that Canberra has the lowest common denominator. When you talk about benchmarking you are talking about the lowest common denominator. We do not want Canberra to be like Sydney. We do not want the ACT to be like Victoria. We do not want Canberra to match up with the dry conservative Liberal policies that are in place in other States. We want Canberra to be better. We want it to deliver services that are not available in those other States. At least there has been an attempt in this budget to do that.
What happens in Health if we use casemix? Casemix funding, in its rawest form, is the lowest common denominator style of budgeting for health. That is the reality of the system, and, yes, it will save money. That is what it will do. If you take casemix and you adapt it to suit the Canberra scene, yes, it probably has a role. My understanding, from the way he has answered questions on this issue, is that that is exactly what the Minister for Health is looking for. To adopt it in its raw form, as Mrs Carnell suggests, I think has huge limitations. The cardio-thoracic unit, which I support, will require an extra $1m and no doubt will have some advantages for the Canberra community. Those advantages were set out by the investigation into this issue that was carried out by Dr Michael Gardner in April, I believe, and I presume that the Minister has a copy of that report. I hope that he will make it available to members of the Assembly.
Mr Connolly: I do not think anyone has asked me for it, but yes.
MR MOORE: The Minister interjects, "Just ask me for it", and that is what I am doing right now.
What are we going to do from a Liberal point of view? We are going to look for new jobs, new business and business investment, and encourage business, and we are going to throw an extra $5m into the Economic Development Division. We are going to throw $5m extra to small business. I see Mr Westende looking over there and thinking, "That is probably a very positive idea". But let us remember, in terms of that $5m, that Mr Westende is sitting there and is proud, and ought to be proud, that his business has doubled its employment capacity over the last two or three years. Why? Because the business is running efficiently. We are now at a time when businesses like Mr Westende's and those which cannot run quite as efficiently and quite as competently will have the chance to thrive, because we are coming out of recession. Now is the time for us to say, "Is it good expenditure for us to continue putting money into that division?". I think we are currently expending some $13m in that area, and the Liberals would increase it.
Add to that the notion of efficiency. They are always after efficiency, they say. Hardly did they finish talking about efficiency when they were talking about reintroducing police road rescue - doubling up on services. We already have an efficient road rescue service. Why would we double up? It is the one thing that the Labor Government did in
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