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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 164 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Furthermore this Assembly requires the Minister for Health to provide to each Member all the future editions of these reports within seven days of receiving them or 15 days after the end of the reporting period, whichever is sooner.

Mr Speaker, this motion is about something which has been raised before in this Assembly in relation to the reporting of health activity and financial management. I will deal with the history first. In 1989, with the new Assembly and new departmental structure, reporting structures were not well developed, but they have been implemented over the last seven years. In 1991, an Assembly motion required the Minister to provide to members the new monthly financial reports from the board. This motion was carried over the protests of the board. In 1992, I began providing the quarterly reports - a comprehensive set - which covered activity levels across the whole portfolio as well as financial performance figures. At the same time, I put in place new systems in Health which would lead to better, more timely and more accurate information being provided to the Assembly. This was built on by Terry Connolly.

In 1995, Mrs Carnell began supplying monthly reports for Woden Valley Hospital, and, more recently, for Calvary Hospital, the latest version of which we have seen today. Unfortunately, these reports have not been developed further. They still contain whole slabs of information which is always preliminary. I would like to repeat that. Even the figures issued today are preliminary figures, and each time you find a hole in them you always receive the retort, "They are only preliminary; you do not know what you are talking about; did you not read the top of the page?". The Government has never provided any final figures for whole sections of the department. More importantly, the quarterly reports have not been supplied for any quarter. I repeat that. More importantly, the quarterly reports have not been supplied for any quarter in this financial year, and the monthly reports have become more and more tardy. I should say the timing of them has more to do with media management than it has to do with much else.

The Chief Minister's record, of course, is not good. Elected on a promise to fix everything, Mrs Carnell claimed to have all the answers. Mrs Carnell launched the three-year budget, the budget to deliver the promised $10m savings per year in Health. Then Mrs Carnell had to come, cap in hand, to the Assembly to ask for $14.2m more. The Treasurer's monthly financial statement for June 1996 showed the full impact of the health budget overspend - $22.3m. Mrs Carnell then added $38.6m to this year's budget. Of course, that is to lock in the overspend of previous years. We now have a situation where this mismanagement is built in for future generations to look after.

The $38.6m ought to have been enough to buy her way out of trouble, but where is the information about what is going on now? There has been no quarterly report this financial year; the monthly reports contain relatively no financial information; the monthly whole-of-government reports are tardy and incomplete; there are one-line entries for the Canberra Hospital and Health and Community Care; and in no way do they give an accurate and complete picture of what is going on in Health. The first whole-of-government monthly report was not monthly but quarterly, and it was not supplied until November last year. This Minister has been entirely tardy about the

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