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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4157 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

to enable -

wait for this -

funds to be siphoned from the private sector into the public sector.

I am happy to table that. The reason the surgeons are cross is that the public sector could end up better off. I must admit, as Health Minister and the person responsible for the public sector, that if we manage to do well out of the new private hospital, if money that otherwise would have been in the private sector ends up in the public sector, that would not be a negative argument for me. If we can make sure that the services we are providing at the Canberra Hospital can put some extra revenue into the public system to serve more public patients, I cannot see that that is a negative to the people of Canberra. In fact, I am sure that it is not.

In this situation, the things that are self-evident are, firstly, that we have fewer private hospital beds per head of population than anywhere else in Australia and, secondly, that we have the highest level of private insurance. Mr Berry made a comment that it would mean that privately-insured patients could potentially go to the new private hospital, and that would mean a revenue reduction at the Canberra Hospital. That would actually be quite difficult because the great problem we have right at the moment is that we have at least 34 per cent of Canberrans with private health insurance and the last figures I saw at the Canberra Hospital indicated that our admission level of privately-insured patients was about 9 per cent. We know that private patients are using our public system, and they have every right to do so, and are not declaring their private insurance. Therefore, there is no revenue going into our public system. If those people choose now to use a private hospital, for whatever reason, rather than the public system, there is a bed freed up for a public patient. Mr Speaker, I think that is a very good thing to encourage. (Extension of time granted) If we can free up more public beds, that has to be a good thing.

Let us look at the things that we know here. We know, firstly, that Mr Berry's consistency on such things as commercial-in-confidence and tender documents is, shall we say, less than perfect. In fact, he says what suits him at the time, and that is totally proven. It is interesting to note that none of the recommendations say that the new private hospital should not have gone ahead. The terms of reference read:

... ... ...

(a) current provision of both public and private beds in the ACT and the appropriate ratio of public/private beds as well as the overall requirement for beds in the ACT and surrounding region;

I think that is really a useful thing to do. A lot of that work had already been done. So, what is the recommendation? It reads:

The ACT Government commission an independent review of public and private bed needs with particular reference to the impact ...

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