Page 3938 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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the budget, and we continue to reject slashing $30m out of the budget. If Mrs Carnell is saying, "You are having difficulty coping with your current budget", please, Mrs Carnell, tell us how you are going to provide everybody with every service, as you constantly promise, for $30m less.
MR DE DOMENICO: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I thank the Minister for his non-answer, but can I just ask the Minister very plainly: Minister, why do you give your bureaucrats, your senior managers in the Woden Valley Hospital, documents which you now purport to be inaccurate?
MR CONNOLLY: One is reminded of the phrase that Mr Humphries once used: "At least I am honest now that I am in opposition". I think that statement was made in relation to health. We have not heard Mr Humphries yet today, but we certainly know that it does not apply to Mr De Domenico.
I have not said that things are untrue. What I am saying is that you cannot rely on scattered internal working documents. Various agencies of ACT Health run their programs on a quarterly basis. In fact, from other documents that Mrs Carnell has leaked here, some of them are operating on a weekly basis and a daily basis. We actually know, for the first time ever, how we are going in ACT Health. As Arthur Andersen said, "Until you actually get a fix on your expenditure, until you actually know what you are spending, trying to live within a budget is going to be very difficult".
Mr Humphries: It does not help very much, does it? You are still $2.1m over budget.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Humphries says, "It does not make much difference". It will make a world of difference. The result of these improved management procedures, which Mr Berry has been working on for some years and which we have been continuing since the change of the baton, was that a projected blow-out of $9m to $10m at this time last year came in at exactly half that, which was one of the best figures since self-government.
Mr Humphries: But you have already topped the budget up, anyway, by $14m.
MR CONNOLLY: You say, "You top the bucket up". It is this crude, simplistic analysis. There are areas of ACT health expenditure, as there are for every State in Australia, that governments have to put additional money into - areas like single use items; better infection controls; massive increases in pathology budgets. It is interesting that, when Ron Phillips announces some more money for health, his Liberal acolytes here say, "Oh, what a fine fellow Ron Phillips is". When we increased the budget last year, you were on about top-ups and short-term measures. Appropriately for the health of this community, this Government will continue its proud record of a very high level of expenditure on health, which is lower in terms of the gap between us and other States now than it was under you. We have put in the hard yards of bringing excess expenditure down - something that you were patently unable to achieve in your period in government, Mr Seventeen Million Dollars. We had a great result. We will not slash $30m out of the health expenditure, as you promised to do.
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