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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 786 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Berry said, "Mr Connolly brought his budget in on track". Yes, he did, because all they did was add the money up front. They just poured a lot of money in up front, did not service any more patients, and managed to bring in the budget target. Certainly, a bit of extra money was spent in terms of business rules and so on; but, taking all that into account, anybody can bring in a budget on target if you put in $14m up front and do not treat any more patients. Maybe that is the approach we should take, if that is what this Assembly believes; but what happened as a result of that approach was that waiting lists blew out. Waiting lists have blown out every year. What normally has happened in Health is that we have had a blow-out in expenditure and we have had a blow-out in waiting lists, both together.

This year I make no apologies. The budget situation is unacceptable in the extreme. We have attempted to put in place quite substantial changes to overcome that. I remember when I put on Booz Allen, back at the beginning of this financial year, the absolute screams of horror from those opposite. "You must not do this", they said. "You cannot possibly spend $1m on a consultancy to show you where your problems are". When we got the report there were screams of horror. How could you possibly suggest that you might want to get rid of a few people from certain areas, particularly the clerical areas and the support staff areas? Shock, horror! You cannot possibly do it. Well, we did it. We got the Booz Allen report. We then determined to put it in place, and that is where the wheels fell off. We determined that it was important to bring the staff with us, so we set up committees of the various people involved to work through the recommendations of Booz Allen. I believe that that is an important process, but it certainly took a lot longer than I believed it would. I am not walking away from the fact that that is my responsibility; it is. But I believed that it was important that the staff understood the changes, and understood what needed to happen. Of course, that then ran into the dispute on wages, which has meant that at this stage virtually none of the Booz Allen changes are in place.

The budget was predicated, as everybody here would know, on substantial reform. Mr Moore is right; from opposition I made consistent comments that I believed that there needed to be fundamental changes in Health. I still believe that there need to be fundamental changes in Health. If we do not fundamentally change Health, this will happen every year, as it has happened every year in the past. We will blow out budgets or we will put more money in up front. We will end up with longer waiting lists and the most inefficient health system in this country. In fact, the recent national report shows yet again that the cost of treating a patient, at the same quality level, at Woden Valley Hospital is still 30 per cent above the national average. Those figures were not collected in my time as Health Minister; they were figures collected in 1993-94, I think, potentially, when Mr Berry was Health Minister. I am not suggesting that we have got to the heart of this yet; but we do have a new head at the hospital, somebody with experience, somebody who is making a real difference. That person has been in place only since Christmas, so I do not think we can expect absolute miracles. In fact, a large amount of this blow-out, as the monthly reports will show, happened in the first four months of this financial year. Certainly, we have not got it under control since then. The new head of the Department of Health started only in the last few weeks. Those people with whom we do have performance contracts certainly have not been in place long enough yet to help make the fundamental differences that we plan to make; but they will be made.

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