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made under the then Liberal Health Minister, Mr Humphries, to start that development work. Those development works were started, as I said in some debate this morning, in effect by Wayne Berry. That was when decisions were first made to start funding the information system.

This paper, again, seems a good opportunity to put this casemix issue to bed as a great issue dividing the parties, because in - - -

Mrs Carnell: It never was. You just made it so.

MR CONNOLLY: Indeed. I note at page 5 of Professor Hindle's paper some statements that very accurately reflect the views of one party in the last election campaign. Having discussed the debate about casemix, he says:

Much of the debate has reflected two common views, neither of which has much validity. One is that casemix-based funding is easy, and is the answer to all health care problems.

That remarkably reflected a lot of the rhetoric in the Liberal Party's election campaign. He continued and said:

The other is that it is undesirable in any circumstances.

Of the health spokespersons, only one of us has been guilty of one of these errors, because I have never been saying, and Labor has never been saying, that casemix is undesirable in any circumstances. Indeed, we funded the basic work on which this implementation process is going to be based. The criticism that some people have taken the view that casemix-based funding is easy and is the answer to all health care problems does, rather, reflect the naive views that were being put about by Mrs Carnell during the election campaign.

To the extent that we now have common ground between the parties, in Mrs Carnell's words, that casemix information is a tool that can be used to evaluate the process of delivery of care, we fully endorse Mrs Carnell in saying that. That is what we have always been saying. I see in this a significant move away from the naive view that casemix funding, as the mantra, will solve all the problems. The point is again made, and well made by Mrs Carnell, that a shortcoming associated with the implementation of casemix in other States is that casemix has been primarily a tool for funding hospitals. That is why we have always been saying that casemix as a funder can lead to disastrous consequences.

I see here a quite extensive and detailed critique by Professor Hindle about where that approach has caused major problems in Victoria - again, that is something that I have said in the past - and problems of a lesser order in some other States. He sets out here, in some detail, what will be done to implement the use of casemix as a tool to refine our delivery of health services in the ACT, and Labor will object in no way to that process continuing, because it is a process that we were setting in place - the use of DRGs, the Trendstar system, which is the basic package that will be running it. He is critical that

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