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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2348 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

So, quite frankly, I am more than happy to give Mrs Carnell these major changes in the structure of Health. I do not know whether it is the solution. I doubt very much whether there will be any drastic change. I tend to agree with a lot of what Mr Moore and Mr Berry had to say about it. It does appear to be more of the same. However, as I have said, Mrs Carnell does have a certain mandate, I suppose, for reform within Health. Just to repeat what I said, I certainly do not want to give her any excuse when it does not work. I do not want her to say, "We tried to do this with Health. We tried to restructure our health services, but we were not allowed because of the Independents". In summing up, I think we are getting more of the same. However, this is your party, Mrs Carnell. Have fun with it.

MR WOOD (5.42): Mr Speaker, "purchaser-provider" is the term that is all the rage at the moment, and I want to make some comments about it. My comments are made in view of a recent trip I had with the Public Accounts Committee to New Zealand. I want to stress that these are my views. They are not the committee's views. They are simply the reflection I have of that trip. Overall, after a week of intensive talking to a large number of people, it was my view that they were saying that the purchaser-provider model was not up to expectations. The promoters of that style would, no doubt, claim that it is fairly early days still, even in New Zealand, and that it should be given time. But there was certainly considerable disappointment with it.

The words that Mrs Carnell used in her introductory speech are the same words I heard consistently in New Zealand. She talked about budget management, accountability, transparency and this wonderful purchaser-provider scheme. That is the system where the central office purchases, on behalf of the Government, health services from whatever providers there are to offer it; but mostly, of course, from the established facilities such as hospitals. In New Zealand they have four regional health authorities. We are about to develop one of those. As well as that, the traditional providers, such as hospitals, are now established as crown health enterprises, or CHEs. The RHAs - the regional health authorities - buy from the CHEs. I first heard about that system when I went to the RHA and had a fairly long discussion with the person who ran it. That person, who impressed me, seemed to know a great deal about it. The view I got from there was that they now know what the costs of their services are, where all the money is going and exactly what it is buying, because they were able to establish a contract with the provider which said, "This is what we will deliver at this cost". I was impressed. I said, "Wow! Good stuff!". They have a system with everything under control. They know exactly what is happening. We were impressed, were we not, Mr Kaine?

Mr Kaine: Yes, we were.

MR WOOD: A little later, we went down to a CHE that is contracted to provide those services. The gentleman there also impressed me. I thought he was a very good administrator - or he gave me the impression of being one, in an hour's conversation. He pointed out to us that the financial year was 11 months gone and they still did not have a contract. There was no contract, and there was not much that the regional health authority could do about it because they provided - I forget the exact figure -

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