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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (21 May) . . Page.. 1520 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

What is going to happen next year if the health costs go up further? What is going to happen to these organisations? Will the budgets just be taken off them? Will the money just be put somewhere else? Will the traditional health systems take priority and primacy and community services not have a say in what happens to their budgets? Or can we be assured that their budgets will be fully sourced next year and that they will be taken care of? We are seeing here a situation where the Government have suggested that they have not managed the health budget and they need more money; that you can merely ask for more money and the money should be given. If that is the case, I am sure that a number of organisations will be gratified because they know that they can just ask for more and, of course, it will be given.

MS TUCKER (12.02): I am surprised at Mrs Carnell's response, for a number of reasons. She says quite strongly that she was astonished that the Estimates Committee should come down with a report that says that such scrutiny should not have occurred. Mrs Carnell felt that, effectively, what the majority of the committee members said in their conclusion was that they were not convinced that there was even a need for the second appropriation and, therefore, for the supplementary estimates committee process that went with it. I was part of that committee, I attended all hearings, and it was certainly not my impression that at any point members of that committee said that they did not think scrutiny of some kind of movement of money by the Government was not appropriate. What the committee said was that there were other ways that movement of money could be carried out equally clearly under scrutiny, and they were questioning the relevance or the appropriateness of the second appropriation. We have talked at length about whether or not that was necessary or appropriate. I have to make it quite clear as a member of that committee that I never said, and I do not believe that anyone else did, that members of that committee did not welcome the opportunity to look closely at these sorts of movements of money.

I would also like to say that by focusing on the process, by saying that it is superior because of its transparency, Mrs Carnell and her Government have tried to deflect attention from the real issue, which is the mismanagement of the health budget. I have already spoken about the serious implications of the other apparent motivation for this process, which was that we need to make health officials take responsibility, or shame them, as it were, for blowing the budget. But when we look at the reasons for the blow-out in the budget we have some pretty serious questions to ask about who actually was responsible for that blow-out. I have already gone through all that in previous speeches, so I will not repeat it.

Mrs Carnell is suggesting that we do not have a great deal of respect for the need for the Estimates Committee to look at these sorts of movements of money. I think she has shown some disrespect or is making a bit of a farce of the whole process. We were told in that Estimates Committee that this money would be coming out of urban services capital works, the Treasurer's Advance and the redundancy pool. Since then we have been told that that is not going to happen; that it is capital works and it is frozen there. You start wondering what was the point of all the questions anyway if it just changes straightaway afterwards.

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