Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 784 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, additional to that, we know that Mrs Carnell has indicated publicly that she is going to, or is likely to, come back to the Assembly and ask for a further appropriation. She is going to do that because of an admitted $14m-odd blow-out in the health budget. I think these two matters are inextricably linked. The issue of whether she has recklessly misled over the VMOs is all about ensuring that she can manage the health budget appropriately, that she can get the savings that she is looking for, and that she can meet her budget targets. She talks constantly about meeting those budget targets and she talks constantly about ensuring that she can have the appropriate chief executive officers on contract to be able to force them to meet those targets, and that is her responsibility.

That is why it is, Mr Speaker, that I have circulated an amendment to this motion. I now move this amendment circulated in my name:

After "contracts" add "and her inability to meet her own financial standards as demonstrated by her failure to control the health budget".

If this amendment were passed, Mr Speaker, the whole motion would read:

That this Assembly censures the Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care for recklessly misleading this house over the claimed savings arising from the visiting medical officer contracts and her inability to meet her own financial standards as demonstrated by her failure to control the health budget.

It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that with these two inextricably linked issues it is appropriate for this house to say to this Chief Minister, in the severest possible terms, "If you set the standards yourself, you have to meet them yourself". That has not been done. It follows a long history, with her sitting in the Opposition benches, particularly where Mr Whitecross sits now, and saying, "It can be done. We can do it, and it ought to be done".

Mr Humphries: Has not everyone done that, Michael? Every Minister has done that, not just Kate.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects that every Minister has done that, not just Kate. In this case we are talking about her setting the standards; her looking at getting the health budget under control; her telling us that it can be done, that she could do it; and then finding that there is a $14m blow-out in the health budget. Mr Speaker, I believe that both of these things are inextricably linked. The Chief Minister should be censured on the combination of these issues, and I am prepared to vote that way.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (12.26): Mr Speaker, I have a very brief contribution to make to the debate based on the amendment read by Mr Moore, and it is really a question to him. The present budget is the fourth budget, on my reckoning, since self-government to have blown out. Mr Moore was present since the beginning - - -

Mr Berry: Connolly's did not.

MR HUMPHRIES: There have been six budgets.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .