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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 776 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I think it is unfortunate that we should do what I think we have not done before, and that is censure a Minister for essentially applying accepted models that they have inherited with their departments. Mrs Carnell is not the first Minister to preside over a blown-out budget. I plead guilty on that score. Mr Berry would, if he were prepared to be honest about it.

Mr Kaine: Two out of four ain't bad.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed, two out of four ain't bad. I also say in my credit that I am also one of only two Ministers to have presided over a budget which came in on target, namely, the 1989-90 health budget.

Mr Berry: You did not.

MR HUMPHRIES: I did, too. Mr Speaker, the fact of the matter is that what we have today is a need to change a culture in health financing, which is going to be a task of mammoth proportions. Our health system is a huge part of the total ACT budget. It represents a quarter of our total expenditure in the Government. It is obviously an area which for a period, ever since self-government and long before, no doubt, has experienced a number of unfortunate accounting and other work practices which have led to its being a substantial problem for successive governments.

We put a number of measures in place in the early part of 1990, for example, under the Alliance Government, which we believed, as a result of a report we had received late in 1989, would fix the problem with health budgeting. It was a most forlorn expectation. It did not do that. There have been successive problems each year with the way in which the health budget has been operated and delivered. The problems outlined in this Auditor-General's report are merely the most recent in a succession of those problems. We have never before, however, censured a Minister in this place for having applied an inherited model and drawn conclusions and created expectations, if you like, from that inherited model. We have always used this model. The one we are using that is criticised in this report has been used since day one of self-government, and probably long before. No doubt it has been one of a large number of factors that have led to problems in our health budget. It is unfortunate that we - - -

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, this point of order was raised earlier and I would like you to look at it again. It is the issue of relevance. Mrs Carnell went over the historical features of this whole debate once. Could Mr Humphries demonstrate to us why saying "I state again that we have saved $2m" is not misleading this Assembly? That would help in the course of this debate.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order, Mr Berry.

Government members interjected.

MR SPEAKER: Order! I will handle this. Mr Humphries has a legitimate personal reason for involvement in this, as a previous Minister. He is elaborating, and I am sure that he will explain the situation, as he sees it, to my satisfaction as well as everybody else's.

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