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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 688 ..

MRS CARNELL: You asked the question again. I can tell you what the cost-benefit analysis was. The Commonwealth cut $1.3m. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth did not come to us and say, "ACT Government, let us have a cost-benefit analysis on our taking away $1.3m". They absolutely unilaterally took away $1.3m from the ACT and, for that matter, from every other State.

Ms Tucker: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I asked for a cost-benefit analysis of choosing to charge for the initial checkup but not subsequent work. I did not ask for a cost-benefit analysis of Commonwealth funding.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There is no point of order.

Ms Tucker: The point of order is that she should answer the question.

MR SPEAKER: I have been through this with members repeatedly.

MRS CARNELL: With regard to the cost-benefit analysis, we ended up with $1.3m less than we had before. That meant that we had to ask our patients, our staff and a significant number of other people how we would address this problem in the best interests of the community - in other words, make the money we had in this area go further. I think we have made the money go further by achieving the sorts of ends we have managed to achieve in providing free dentistry for people on pensions and for low-income earners, in getting mobile services back to the schools - something that I think will be a real benefit - and at the same time in managing at least some improvement in the dollar amount going to our adult service.

From our analysis, we believed that if we had done nothing in the dental area we would have very quickly ended up with waiting lists approximating the waiting lists that occurred prior to the previous Federal Government bringing in the dental scheme. Those waiting lists were running up to four years. The analysis that this Government did showed that those sorts of waiting lists simply were not acceptable and we had to do everything in our power to avoid them.

MR CORBELL: My question is to Mr Kaine in his capacity as Minister for Tourism. Minister, can you confirm that the chief executive of Canberra Tourism has written a letter to the chairman of the Canberra Business Council outlining his serious concerns about the dismissive and contemptuous attitude of the Federal Tourism Minister, Mr John Moore, towards Canberra as the national capital? Minister, have you raised this issue with the Federal Minister, and will you defend the ACT tourist industry from your Federal colleague?

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