Page 3023 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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Then the Government is criticised for not spending more on the health system. Mrs Carnell promises to take more than $30m out of the health budget. Nobody in their wildest mind could interpret that as anything other than a massive slashing of health services. What alternative means of providing those services has she come up with? She has come up with none. All that she has been able to do is to propose the massive cut in funding, which in turn means less funding for health. Let us not forget that the Federal Liberals proposed that as well in the last election. Thankfully, they lost. At the same time, they call on us to spend more on accident and emergency services. Let us have cardio-thoracic surgery, a hospital in Tuggeranong and paediatric specialists at Calvary Hospital. Let us double up. Let us cut out more money and let us double up. We should not forget Gary Humphries's promised private hospital in Belconnen. Whenever we get a new candidate in a new area, we get a promise from the Liberals to build a new hospital and put in extra services.
We keep coming back to the promise that Mrs Carnell has made, to cut over $30m from the health system. How is she going to produce all the goods? You do not worry about that in opposition. You can be irresponsible. Mrs Carnell has demonstrated how good she is at it. She is the best when it comes to irresponsibility. In a system where most of the money is spent on paying people to provide services - a system which Mrs Carnell says needs more staff - a cut of $30m could mean up to 750 fewer staff. I hope that all those people that the Liberals are going to lay off do not get sick. They will not be able to get into the hospital because there will be massive cuts within the health system, according to the formula which the Liberals talk about. Meanwhile, they ignore the reality that Labor has increased health funding.
The privatisation espoused by the Liberals is an ideological objective, not a rational response to the real needs of the community. It is clearly a fascination that they have. They are mesmerised by privatisation and contracting out. They have no concept at all of social justice. All that they have a commitment to is the individual. They have no commitment at all to collectivism or community solidarity. They do not even understand the concept. Theirs is a dogma that will be pursued willy-nilly, no matter what the costs are. At one stage, Mrs Carnell was going to flog off our whole health system and contract out the lot. Her public statements have always been peppered with this sort of half-baked idea.
The Liberal budget strategy claims that we are blind to the problems of debt; but Labor has reduced the net Territory debt since self-government, and we have done it very well, thank you very much. We are way ahead. Territorians will not be blinded by the sorts of popular statements that Mrs Carnell makes, off the cuff, every time a TV camera comes into view or somebody pokes a microphone in her face. It is the Liberal strategy which is blind. It is blind to the fact that, if you spend more, you cannot tax less without getting into debt, can you, Trevor?
The reply to the budget by the Leader of the Opposition included a strategy which would result in a public sector financing requirement of $10m by 1997-98. If you contrast this with Labor's strategy, where the forward estimates show that we can expect to have a surplus of $51m by 1997-98, you can see who is managing better. We have only to look back at the Liberals' performance and we can quite easily discover that it was the
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