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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2292 ..

MR SPEAKER: But there was a section about the cost of the change of name, I think, that you may care to address.

MRS CARNELL: There was, except that that actually pre-empts the debate that is coming up in a minute; but I am very happy to answer it. Mr Berry would know a lot about lost things, as he lost 4,000 operations during the time that he was there - - -

Mr De Domenico: And $4m in VITAB.

MRS CARNELL: And, of course, all of the money with regard to VITAB and 200 hospital beds that were lost or closed when he was Minister; but he did find an awful lot of people who needed surgery, when waiting lists went up by 150 per cent under Mr Berry. So, I think Mr Berry would be very wise to be a little, tiny bit quiet on things that are lost, Mr Speaker.

Mr Berry: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: There is an issue of relevance here and giving a concise answer. I asked this question, Mr Speaker: How can the Chief Minister possibly accept such a hospital system and be prepared to invest public funds in these wasteful changes in the administration which she plans to proceed with today?

MR SPEAKER: The Chief Minister is answering the question as she sees fit.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I was just about to answer the question totally. I have answered the first part of the question already, and now for the second part. The changes that have been put forward, which we will debate, I suspect, very shortly today, do not cost an extraordinary amount of - - -

Mr Berry: Hundreds of thousands.

MRS CARNELL: They do not costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mr Speaker. In fact, the costs are absolutely minimal, because there is actually no new level of management at all. The proposed board structure is that the board will have a direct line of command to me. Underneath that, there are four board members, who could be paid. Those board members, at most, will be paid $14,000 a year. I think that is $56,000. There is no new administrative support. It is already there in the hospital system at this moment. But, again, Mr Berry is wrong about increased costs. The level of cost saving is even to the stage, if this Assembly does decide to pass the legislation later today, where we have no view that we will even throw out our stationery. In fact, we would assume that everyone would continue to use the stationery that they have, and their cards, including, of course, those people who have businesses at Woden Valley Hospital - hopefully, to be called the Canberra Hospital.

So, we believe that the appropriate approach is to minimise costs but to maximise management benefits and to maximise the benefits that this new structure will bring to our patients. It does bring together both the hospital and our community care, so that we can have continuity of care, so that we can focus on the patient and not on the structures, and so that we can look at having healthier people in Canberra, rather than just having a system which uses up, in our view, far too much money for outcomes that are not as good as we believe that we can achieve under the new structure.

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