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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 2629 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

health care card holders. Is that not interesting? Another three have 100 per cent bulk-billing. Mr Connolly and those opposite supported that motion to have only 100 per cent bulk-billing GPs in the health centres, but what did Mr Connolly allow? He allowed GPs who were bulk-billing only pensioners and health care card holders - exactly what we want to achieve.

Talking about the Canberra Times, let us look at a letter that was published in the Canberra Times from one of the CMPs just this week - a letter from Dr Wayne Wardman, who has been part of the public system in the ACT for a quite long period of time. He said:

The Carnell Government has taken the brunt of a process that commenced long before it came to power. Under Rosemary Follett the number of salaried GPs fell from 18 to 9 in a little over one year.

"Natural attrition" was her modus operandi; no replacements; no locums; just a slow grinding-down of the system. Her party is hardly the paragon of virtue that it professes to be.

At least Kate Carnell was honest in the manner she approached our retrenchment and her clear desire to see us stay at our respective centres in a private capacity. But the Labor Party and Independents clouted that idea rather firmly.

That letter was in the Canberra Times. What we have done is exactly what Mr Connolly said, and that is that we have made sure that our precious health resources in the ACT are being spent on the areas of health that we are responsible for. Mr Connolly said exactly that in this Assembly in 1994; that we have to channel our resources to the areas where we can get maximum benefit. Mr Connolly said that private GPs, predominantly bulk-billing, are providing the service in Canberra and we have to channel our resources elsewhere. Those were Mr Connolly's words, not mine; and I agree. That is exactly what we have to do. We have to get our resources into areas such as mental health services, family care, crisis care for families - all of those sorts of things that are desperately needed out there in the community. We have been quite up front about that.

GP services are a responsibility of Medicare. They are a Federal Government responsibility. Someone opposite or someone on the crossbenches has said, "But Medicare does not quite work. There is such a thing as the working poor who tend to fall through the cracks". I agree with that, but that is a problem with Medicare - - -

Mr Berry: Of course you would, because that is the AMA's line.

MRS CARNELL: No, that is the Greens' line. I agree with that line. But that is not the ACT's responsibility; nor can it be, because we are not funded to do that. What we have to look at is exactly what we are talking about here. If health care card holders, pensioners and lower income earners generally are covered under a bulk-bill, the normal fee at this stage in the ACT for GPs is about $30. I think $20.80 is refunded from Medicare. So, at the absolute worst, you are looking at a $9.20 gap. For some families that is a lot of money. There is no doubt about that. But, predominantly, people do not

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