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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 200 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

performance? The hospital has done significantly more cost-weighted separations, that is, average units of service, this year; in fact, about 2,000 extra occasions of service already this year compared to last year.

There is a myth that the Government has an automatic lever to spend more money for more surgery and lower lists. This is false. What we are actually interested in is looking at the long-term structural problems. Yes, there is $16.8m of CUT - that is, critical and urgent treatment - money that is designed to go to the waiting lists. I can do the short-term, short-sighted, politically expedient thing which would be useful for this Government: I can split that money into the next couple of financial years and I can purchase services that would reduce the waiting list. If this Assembly tells me, "That is what you must do, Michael Moore", then that is what I will do. But that would not resolve the long-term problems. It would just mean that the next government to come in would then be faced with a rapidly increasing waiting list.

Instead, we have had the very sensible suggestion by the Health and Community Care Committee that they examine the issue of waiting lists and look at what we are trying to do in terms of long-term structural change and how we are going to use that money for long-term structural change and some of it for dealing with the problem that we have now. That is the appropriate way to go, not this ridiculous short-term, short-sighted push that Mr Stanhope seems to suggest - that I should grab the CUT money, say $11m of it, put it in a bag, take it out to the Canberra Hospital and say, "Here you are, surgeons, do a bit more on the waiting lists and see how we go".

Let me give a specific example of what we have done with it. We have gone to the Calvary Hospital and said, "What we want you to do is have a significant increase in the number of hip replacements". Hip replacements have a very high cost-weight. They are a quite complicated and quite expensive piece of surgery. The waiting list numbers do not come down as much, because it is not just numbers; but what happens when you replace somebody's hip, as many of you will know, is that there is a phenomenal decrease in the amount of pain that people have. It is one of the most successful pieces of surgery. It does not bring the waiting lists down, but it does a much better service for the community. We have spent a significant amount of money on getting that particular piece of surgery done because that is the one that politically is hard to do. It is much better to bring the waiting lists down by saying, "Go through your list and pick out all the people who have an ingrown toenail or require a small operation to a knee, and let us do those".

Mr Hargreaves: That is an old argument, Michael. You did not win the last time and you will not win it now.

MR MOORE: I know, Mr Hargreaves, that you do not want to hear this stuff. I know that you do not want to look at the complexities. I know that you want to make it simple so that you have something for short-term political expedience. But what we really ought to be doing is working together to see how we can improve the situation, and that is what the Health and Community Care Committee is on about.

Let me talk about a couple of things in particular that I have done. I will start with this one: For the first time ever here and the first time in Australia I have circulated individual surgeon's waiting lists to every GP. I have done that for two months. Mr Stanhope

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