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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2328 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

in this country. What we are doing is moving our health system into line with the rest of Australia. We have had enormous problems in Health, not the least with budgets, in the past. Not to put too fine a point on it, this Assembly has made it very clear to me as Health Minister that it is my responsibility to fix up the health system. It has been made clear by all of the people around this Assembly that I am on notice; that I have to fix the budget problem; that I have to get management of our health system under control or this Assembly will be very negative. I think Mr Moore made those comments in the debate on the second Appropriation Bill and I think other people in this house did, too.

What this Bill is about, at least from the Government's perspective, is an approach to bring Health management under control, to create more accountability, to bring our budget and our management generally into a form that we believe will achieve the ends that this Assembly wants - a budget that is under control, reduced waiting lists and all of those sorts of things. I agree with Mr Berry that we can go ahead with the purchaser-provider split, but I would have thought that everybody in this Assembly - - -

Mr Berry: Do not take that as my agreement to that, though.

MRS CARNELL: I am not taking it as your agreement to anything, Mr Berry. One would have assumed that this Assembly would have wanted us to get the health systems management structure in place as quickly as possible so we can do what we believe we can in Health, and that is bring budgets in, bring waiting lists down and really have a health system that not only provides the best treatment - and we believe we provide very good treatment - but also has sound management and a sound budget. If this is put off until August for no reason except that Mr Berry has decided, for whatever reason, that he does not want to debate this today - by the way, he gave the Government no indication that he was going to do this or that he wanted more briefings or anything else - I think that would be a big step backwards. Again, this Assembly made it clear that I was on notice to get the health budget back on track; that I was on notice to get the hospital management of Health under control to overcome the problems that, as this Assembly said, I said I could. This is part of that process, Mr Speaker. This approach is very much part of the plans of this Government to do exactly what we said in the election campaign last year that we would do and the things that this Assembly has suggested that I am on notice to achieve.

Mr Berry: You never said you were going to have a health board.

MRS CARNELL: We have said that all the time, Mr Berry. That has been part of our policy right from the election last year. We have indicated time and time again that this was the approach that we would take. The appropriate time to put a board into place and to start a new management structure is 1 July. Certainly, it is possible to do it at another time, but I would have thought this Assembly, as I said before, wants to hold me accountable. From our end, this is part of bringing that management structure back - - -

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