Page 3640 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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MR CONNOLLY: I have not been down there counting them this morning; but what I said yesterday, and the document that I tabled, I think, identified 56. I do not know how many of them are operative today. I do know that the very heavy stress in the paediatrics ward earlier this financial year has eased. Indeed, the last time I was down there one of the four wings did not have any patients in it. I pose the question, "Are they then beds?". "What is a hospital bed?" is an issue that we could debate forever.
Mrs Carnell: I will tell you later.
MR CONNOLLY: I can tell you. We use definitions, and that is where we get these figures from. The reason we count the neonatal cots as beds is that it is consistent with the Medicare agreement.
Mrs Carnell: Only if they are humidicribs.
MR CONNOLLY: It helps our funding arrangement. The New South Wales system does the same thing. Mrs Carnell says, "They are not beds". We will shut them down then, and we will say to parents who cannot get their baby into a cot, "It does not matter, because Mrs Carnell says that they are not beds". Madam Speaker, you have to go to the fundamentals of the health system. For the Liberal Party it is stuff and nonsense. Not a single constructive suggestion have we ever heard in this place from the Liberals about how to better manage the health system - an enormous challenge which faces every government across Australia. All they say is, "Smile at the system; rant and rave; carp and criticise". The hidden agenda is to rip $30m out of the system, because that is your policy.
School Sponsorship
MS ELLIS: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Education, and I ask: What is the Government's policy towards the issue of sponsorship for our schools? Will ACT schools be required to seek commercial sponsorship to make up funding?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, the Education Department, under my guidance, recently has established a sponsorship policy. It was the subject, I think, of some question or some discussion here. Certainly, the media was quite interested in it. We established a number of guidelines, the most significant of which is that there should be no compromise of the educational values of the schools. There are no conditions attached to sponsorship, other than, perhaps, the display of the local supermarket's attention to some of the activity at the school. In particular, the sponsorship must be of appropriate goods and services. What happened was that we really legitimised what was happening. We just endorsed the existing operation, basically, because sponsorship is not going to bring lots and lots of money to the ACT. It is not a significant source of money, and I made that clear. This is, of course, in very significant contrast with what the Liberals propose.
Mrs Carnell: No, it is not. It is exactly the same.
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