Page 3947 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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gap between ACT per capita expenditure and the expenditure for the rest of Australia was getting higher and higher and less sustainable by the year. Since self-government, but more particularly since this second period of Labor government, that gap has been coming down.
Mrs Carnell: It is because we do not have any beds.
MR CONNOLLY: Mrs Carnell says, "We do not have any beds". What can you say to that sort of trivial interjection? I again return to addressing Mr Kaine, who may understand the complexities of the matter. The trend difference between ACT expenditure and other expenditure is coming down. The other day Mrs Carnell and I made some statements which seemed to be in conflict, although we were both saying the same thing. We had said in the Estimates Committee that we had reduced the expenditure the most since 1989-90. That is true. Mrs Carnell said that we are still spending more than any State. That is also true.
It would be the goal of this Labor Government always to be one of the most generous funders of health and welfare services, because we are a Labor government committed to social justice; but we also wish to drive efficiencies. When you look at the Access Economics summary that will be published on Friday - and I would urge any of you who have not accepted an invitation to that lunch to attend - you will find, not in my words but in the words of Access Economics, that the level of productivity improvement in ACT Health in recent years is quite dramatic. We still have a way to go; but we have come an enormous way from a very inefficient, top-heavy, overbureaucratised Commonwealth model that was bequeathed to us upon self-government.
Waiting lists have grown, and that is a matter of concern. I think it is acknowledged by everybody, apart from the Liberals, that obviously one major factor in the large glitch in waiting lists late last year to early this year was the fact that we had a period of industrial action when no elective surgery was done. We are seeking to refine our waiting list data. In fact, I would like to go to the model of the Victorian waiting list data. I do not often praise Marie Tehan, but I have learnt a particularly neat little trick from the Age. They promise that nobody waits as an emergency outpatient for more than four hours. After four hours, you become an in-patient and get counted in hospital throughput as an in-patient. Lies, damn lies and statistics. It is amazing what you learn when you read the Age. We will not be going to that extent. In Victoria they have been able to break down the waiting list not only by category but also by urgency.
As I have said before in this place, I have been alarmed when I have asked the question, "What is the longest case on the waiting list?", and I have found some cases that go back before self-government. They are for things like tattoo removals or tummy tucks - purely cosmetic surgery which, frankly, will wait for a long time on the waiting list. What I need to get a better fix on is the extent to which there are appropriate and clinically urgent cases that are waiting. I have no way of knowing - I do not think anyone has any way of objectively knowing - whether we have a particularly great problem there. Sensible commentators will say, "You need, firstly, to let the impact of last year's strike work itself out through the system; also the massive change that has been occurring at Woden Valley Hospital in recent years needs to work its way through the system".
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