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MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, reference to supplementation of the health budget and use of the term “blowing budgets” was something which Mr Berry became very fond of during the Alliance Government. It is something that has come back to visit him. No doubt he and his colleagues will continue to use the term appropriately.

Mr Speaker, the two decisions that we are looking at are about salaried doctors and the Jindalee Nursing Home, which is divided into the decision about Upper Jindalee and the decision about Lower Jindalee. It would appear that the decision about Lower Jindalee, although the residents did not know, has been made for over a year, and it was made by the former Labor Government. The decision about Upper Jindalee, planned by the Labor Government - it was indicated on a number of occasions that it would have to go - has now been made by the Liberal Government.

We are asked by this motion to determine whether we will reject that decision by the Labor Government. There are some concerns that I think need to be answered by the Government - concerns raised in my investigations recently, both by a number of members of the unions involved and by my visit to Jindalee. Unfortunately, Mr Speaker, I have not had the time to visit a for-profit organisation. Although I have often visited non-profit, non-government nursing homes such as Mirinjani, I have not been, as yet, to one of the profit organisations. So I lack a little knowledge there, although I have read the report of the Social Policy Committee in terms of visiting such organisations and having a quite positive response to them a couple of years ago.

Mr Speaker, one of the concerns that I would like to hear about from the Chief Minister is what happens to people who are not in a position to make a financial contribution but are in need of nursing home care - people who currently can go into Jindalee. I hope that the Chief Minister and Minister for Health will take the opportunity to seek leave from the Assembly to speak again to answer a couple of these questions and the point raised by Ms Tucker. The first question is: What happens to people who currently make no financial contribution and are not in a position to make a financial contribution, but who are in need of nursing home care?

The second point I would like to raise is the point raised by the Nursing Federation, namely, that government-employed nurses have an enterprise agreement that means that they have an award salary that is 10 per cent higher than that of people in the non-government sector. How is that going to be handled? I understand that there is an enterprise agreement in the government sector but none in the non-government sector. Will these staff members lose 10 per cent, what will be the redundancy arrangements, and what will be the likelihood of re-employment of such staff members? I think there is a real concern there, and it is a concern that needs to be addressed. I also am very conscious of an issue that I raised earlier, namely, the overriding factor of the health budget. We do need to get the health budget under control. That is going to take some hard decisions and I believe that there is a responsibility in terms of the crossbenchers not just to play the normal role of an Opposition and constantly say, “You should do something”, and try to ignore the budget implications. It is important for us to take those budget implications into account.

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