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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (21 May) . . Page.. 1521 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I support Ms Reilly's concerns about the community health sector. Mrs Carnell was saying, "What are you asking - that we spend more or less?". The issues about community health and primary and preventative health care have not come up in this discussion and it is about time we heard serious discussion about them. If we are interested in the long term in preventing blow-outs of health budgets, we have to give very serious attention to preventative health care. We are seeing very little focus on it.

Mr Humphries said that Mrs Carnell's priorities are waiting lists and throughput. As I have asked before, where are the waiting lists for the poor people who do not bother to go to the doctor now because they cannot afford the up-front fee? Where are the waiting lists for the people who cannot access allied health professionals because they do not have the up-front fee for that? There is a growing disincentive for people in this community who are on a low income to seek medical help or to try to access a doctor when they really need the doctor. We would like to see greater focus on this aspect of health care and then, in the long term, governments will not have to face these blow-outs in Health which are often caused by - Mrs Carnell has acknowledged this, and I would not disagree - the very expensive procedures that are necessary in our hospital system.

In conclusion, I would say once again that this whole process has been interesting, but not very enlightening. Most of the debate has been around one process versus another and no really serious health issues were debated at all, which is a pity.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (12.07), in reply: Mr Speaker, I would like to start by correcting a number of statements that were made by previous speakers. Mr Whitecross started the debate today by commenting, with regard to section 49 of the Audit Act, that a deliberate change in policy is okay, but budget blow-outs are not. That is actually the policy of the previous Government, not of this Government. In fact, the previous Government used that approach. In other words, it moved money around, using section 49, without coming back to this Assembly. For small amounts of money, where access to the Treasurer's Advance is needed, our approach has been to table that in the Assembly, as can be seen from the document we tabled in, I think, July last year; but we did not perceive $14.2m to be a small amount of money.

Mr Whitecross used the analogy of money being lent and money being moved from one area to another. Say the bank lent you some money for home extensions and, all of a sudden, you wanted to spend it on buying a new car. It would not be all right just to do it, Mr Speaker. It would not be all right just to take that money that the bank had lent you or that the bank had put aside and spend it on a car. You would have to go back to the bank and ask whether it was all right to do that and tell the bank what you were doing. That is exactly what we are doing here, Mr Speaker - coming back to this place and explaining that we are using a significant amount of money for a purpose for which it was not appropriated. To assume for one moment that it is somehow all right to sign off a change to the Appropriation Bill of the significance of this one without coming back to the Assembly is patently ridiculous, Mr Speaker, and we did make that point time and time again from opposition.

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