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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 761 ..

Mr Wood: That is a nice backdown.

MRS CARNELL: It is not a backdown at all. The question here is whether I recklessly misled the house. Recklessly misleading means using information that does not have backup, that you could have every reason to believe was flawed. The information that I had was the same information that was used by Mr Berry and Mr Connolly.

Mr Berry: Oh, cut it out!

MRS CARNELL: It was the same information, Mr Berry. The Auditor-General may well be right, that in the short term the potential for savings is not as good as we would have liked; but certainly the longer-term savings can be achieved. He has concentrated almost exclusively, too, on the cost model and the predictions for savings, rather than also looking at the potential for fundamental reform that the VMO arbitration and the new contract arrangements have finally achieved. I refer to things like having the orthopaedic surgeons have a purchasing contract so that they buy only one form of hip or knee, and we get the best price. We have already saved, I think, fairly close to $100,000 just by taking that sort of approach. That was part of the contractual arrangements; but the Auditor-General has not chosen to take that information on board in his critique of the agreement.

His report is helpful to the Government and to the department for future improvements; but it should be made clear that the cost model information was provided to this Government by the department and it indicated that savings in the order of $3m could be made. I provided that information to this house, straight from the department - information that I do not believe I had any reason to doubt. The Minister can only rely on departmental information. If it is wrong or needs to be better developed, then you certainly have to have some basis upon which to do that. We certainly have that basis now, and we will have a look at our cost modelling. Clearly, the Auditor-General has also indicated that, given the additional matters he has considered, this level of saving will not be achieved in the short term. However, he has said that the new arrangements will have "significant impacts on the incomes of some VMOs". (Extension of time granted) Also, the department acknowledges that the use of cost models is less than perfect and it is now working on a new approach.

In summary, Mr Speaker, Mr Berry and Mr Whitecross, I believe, have a lot to answer for. Again, we did do our absolute best to ensure that the information that was provided to me was right, was accurate and could be relied upon. I had every right to believe that, apart from the fact that we used the same model as had been used by the previous Government, because Rosemary Follett's media release on 30 January 1995, which was a policy position about health for the last election, said:

Labor will build on the work to secure Canberra's health system by:

. reducing waiting lists by providing an extra $3m for surgery ...

The $3m was going to come from the VMO savings, based on their cost model, which was the same as my cost model. It then went on to say:

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