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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 204 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

I expect that to be about the end of this month, about another two or three weeks. No jobs have been put to me at this stage. None. I understand that there was a meeting last night and I expect that there will be some jobs put to me in the next little while.

Mr Speaker, when we are dealing with these issues we have to take a long-term vision rather than a short-term vision. What we need to look at here is what to make of my job as Minister. Let me put to you, firstly, that I am across the issues. Let me put to you, secondly, that I have a vision, a long-term vision, as to where Health should go and what role the hospital should play. I tabled that in "Setting the Agenda" and I am working very hard towards that. Only a week ago I had a meeting with Michael Wooldridge to sort out some of the complex issues, some of the disincentives to the way our systems are funded, in order to see whether we can find a way through the disincentives to sensible outcomes for patients over who funds what, and I am still working on it.

I have a vision of the task required of the hospital, which is to reduce the proportion of money we spend in an expensive institution and see it spent instead on primary health care and in the community, and to do that - - -

Mr Berry: We all have dreams. Everybody has dreams.

MR MOORE: I appreciate that, Mr Berry. Yes, we all have them. I must say that the most important thing is that when I tabled "Setting the Agenda" there were positive comments. In fact, my recollection is that Mr Stanhope said that it could have been a Labor Party document. It was not, of course, but it could have been a Labor Party document. I was very pleased with that. It is something that, day in and day out, I work on and concentrate on.

That leads me to a small aside. Mr Stanhope raised the fact that I still pursue private members business. Indeed, tomorrow morning I will table my autumn sitting program. I did something similar six months ago; but the autumn sitting program, unfortunately, will be almost identical to the one that I tabled last time because of the weight of this work. I have not had the time to put the effort into private members business that I would like to, and that may still continue.

Mr Humphries has circulated an amendment to the motion. It is not an amendment that says that this is not an important issue and just dismisses it. First of all, it admits that there is a problem, and I have admitted the problem all the way along. It states that the Assembly has demanding expectations of governments. I know that you have demanding expectations and I seek to respond to them. I do not take this motion lightly, Mr Stanhope. I take it very seriously.

The amendment that Mr Humphries circulated gives the Government, the hospital management and the public an idea of what the Assembly expects the Government to achieve. It is not a cop-out amendment. It recognises what you are trying to achieve. It changes the approach from a negative approach to a positive and constructive approach to dealing with these issues of the hospital, problems that I have been very open about, putting them out in the public and saying that I am dealing with them. I have stated what I am doing to deal with them.

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