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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 170 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I come back to the real issue here. Mr Berry could not produce monthly reports, he could not produce any data from Calvary and even his quarterly reports ended up being tabled six, seven or eight weeks after the end of the reporting period. What is different now is that we have got better; there is no doubt about that. Our reporting systems are better; we have managed to move to monthly reports; we have managed to move Calvary Hospital into the reporting cycle as well; we are producing financial reports for the whole of the ACT Government on a monthly basis that actually gives real data, real information on where the ACT is up to. But what we cannot do is produce absolute miracles; that is, produce data from the hospital system in 15 days. Mr Berry found it was not possible when he was Minister. The reality is that it is still not possible if we want data that means anything at all.

Mr Berry said that he wanted the data because he believed that he had to expose the absolutely dreadful situation in Health in the ACT at the moment. Mr Berry might like to have a quick look at the December 1996 activity reports. He might like to move to the waiting list page. He might like to look at just about any part of the document at all. Mr Speaker, what he will see is that the number of people on the waiting lists has tracked down by over 1,000 now since we came to government. What Mr Berry will see, all the way through this report, is situations that are actually improving. You have a situation where, if you compare this year with last year, the number of admissions is up. All these sorts of things, I think, show that generally in Health things are improving.

The monthly financial statements to the end of November show that Health is some $4m better placed than we expected, and tomorrow I will be able to table the December whole-of-government financial statements, after which I hope Mr Berry apologises. Mr Speaker, I would like everybody in this place to hold him on notice for the big apology tomorrow, when the December financial statements are brought down. The reality is that they show that Health is still tracking significantly better than we anticipated it would be.

Mr Berry also said, Mr Speaker, that there was something horribly unusual about writing into your starting position your finishing position from last year; in other words, starting your health budget from what you actually spent last year. The fact is that Mr Berry did it every year; he wrote every overrun into the starting point for the next year's budget, the whole four of them; the whole four overruns were written into the bottom line for the next year.

Mr Speaker, what we have here is a situation where there is a lot of hypocrisy floating around today. I am very willing to make sure that our monthly reports from both Calvary Hospital and Canberra Hospital are available in this place within 30 days of the end of the reporting period.

Mr Berry: You have stopped doing quarterly reports?

MRS CARNELL: I am saying that I do not think quarterly reports should be presented; they are just monthly reports multiplied by three. That is simply silly, Mr Speaker.

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