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The three-year budget strategy that I am announcing today will turn around our escalating debt. It demonstrates that we can regain control over our expenditure in a responsible, measured approach, without hurting small businesses or reducing levels of service to the community. Real reductions in outlays of 9 per cent by 1997-98 are a measured response to the imperatives of our financial and economic situation. Our first budget lays the groundwork for this gradual adjustment. It reduces current expenditures below Labor's published forward estimates, it increases capital outlays compared to the published forward estimates, and it will enable long-term liabilities such as superannuation to be funded in the future from real surpluses, placing borrowings on a more rational basis.

The Government's No. 1 commitment remains the delivery and expansion of quality health services at a more affordable cost. Successive reviews have shown that we are spending about $30m a year more than national averages on hospitals, while other health services are funded at close to national averages. Two weeks ago I released the Booz Allen and Hamilton report. This has laid the foundation for our reforms. Over the next three years health costs will be reduced and savings will be reinvested to improve services and meet rising costs. Within two months of coming to government, I was able to reach agreement with visiting medical officers on new contracts, after more than two years of hostile negotiations with two previous Health Ministers. These contracts will deliver savings of close to $3m a year.

Booz Allen and Hamilton’s review will help us to build on these real savings without compromising patient care and with a real improvement in the continuity of care. A key objective will be to reduce the size of the corporate “head office” to a small strategic unit and focus more resources on delivering services to patients. This will require the creation of statutory authorities for our hospital and community health services from 1 July next year. These reforms will coincide with a concerted attack on the Territory's waiting lists for elective surgery.

I gave a commitment that I would not turn my back on the four-and-a-half-thousand Canberrans who are waiting for much needed operations. This commitment is reflected in the allocation of $2m in additional funds this year to provide for more than 600 extra operations, targeting the most urgent cases. A total of $500,000 has been set aside to provide for the initial set-up costs for a cardio-thoracic surgery unit at Woden Valley Hospital. The unit is expected to open - at long last, may I say - in late 1996. A total of $1.2m has been allocated to our new Clinical School for the appointment of teaching positions in surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and geriatric medicine. I can also advise that the opening of the adolescent ward at Woden Valley Hospital is scheduled for June 1996, and the Health Complaints Unit has now been properly resourced.

In recognition of the growing demand for services in Gungahlin, an additional $100,000 will be injected into extra child and family health programs in that area. The Government has also delivered on its commitment to properly resource disability services. An extra $500,000 will be allocated for additional individual support packages for people with disabilities who are currently in the care of their families. In line with the disability services development project, the Government has already made significant advances in reforming residential services. Our objective is to reform these services to better meet the needs not just of clients but also of their families and carers.

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