Page 3937 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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Mr Lamont: She cannot even run the Opposition.
MR CONNOLLY: Quite so; as my colleague says, she cannot even run the Opposition, as was woefully demonstrated this morning when it was clear that she could not even get her lines of communication with Mr Kaine straight. One of you lucky winners over there, should you somehow find yourselves in government, may be Health Minister. It may be Mr Humphries, Mr Seventeen Million Dollars.
Last year, the figure was $4.5m. I understand that you have been doing a bit of squawking at a 2 o'clock press conference, suggesting that, shock, horror, there is going to be a $2.1m blow-out for Health in this current financial year. Firstly, do not believe whatever documents are falling off the backs of trucks; internal working documents projecting all sorts of things are not certain. We will produce, in a week or so, when it is all finalised, the correct figures; the honest, open figures. For about 2½ years now we have been producing in this place these figures that you never produced because you did not know; you did not have a clue; you would not answer a question in this place about health blow-outs. The constant refrain from both the then Health Minister and the then Treasurer was, "Wait until the budget". You could not answer. Now you seem to deny that. So, it is not that you could not; it is that you would not, and that says a lot about honesty in government. We have been producing quarterly health reports, done to a certain standard. I do not think that they have ever been impugned as involving fiddling figures or involving rubbery figures; no accountant or independent consultant has suggested that there has been anything wrong with those quarterly figures. They will come out in a couple of weeks' time.
Assuming that you are right, Mr De Domenico - and you are not - an overall overrun of $2.1m would represent about the best figure that ACT Health has operated on for a very long time. It would compare very favourably with that of Mr Seventeen Million Dollars, who said, "But we really did not know until the end of the day, when it had happened", and would be better than the $4.5m which was achieved last year and which represented an enormous achievement. There were some typically hysterical press releases of a health blow-out of $10m or $9m - what is a few million dollars in Mrs Carnell's fudging approach to figures? There were the "You are going to blow out by $9m" hysterical press releases at this time last year. The actual figure was much better than the $6m Arthur Andersen projection as at February-March. If it is going to be $2.1m - and I do not say that it is; you will get the figures in due course - - -
Mr De Domenico: I have them now.
MR CONNOLLY: No; you have some internal working documents out of Woden. There is a lot of work to be done to put those figures through.
Mr De Domenico: To correct them.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Kaine, one free afternoon give a seminar on public finance to your colleagues; they could only benefit from your wisdom. Madam Speaker, if it were $2.1m - and I am not saying that it is - it would represent a significant achievement and one of the best results that ACT Health has brought in. We continue to aim to balance
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