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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 228 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

it appears, a year, and also, it appears, very close to one head of hospital every year. Mr Speaker, that does not strike me as a significantly better performance. In fact, it is a worse performance than has happened under this Government.

Mr Stanhope says that we should be worried about the cost of our health system. Let me remind him of what the Labor Government said about such things as the Clinical School when it was being set up - one of the significant new costs in our health system. According to Mr Berry, the then Health Minister, he told the Canberra Times - and I note that those opposite are using the Canberra Times as the basis of all facts, so this is obviously fact - in January 1993 that the school would be cost neutral to ACT Health because professional chairs would be made by replacing existing positions in the hospital system. So why did the next Liberal Government have to find several million dollars of ongoing expenditure when it came to office to fund the Clinical School? Quite seriously, Mr Speaker, it was because it had not been costed properly and the, I think, very appropriate policy that Mr Berry brought in was brought in without the appropriate research, background and knowledge of what the costs would actually be.

So, what is Mr Stanhope's answer to the problems confronting the public hospital, the same ones that confront every government around Australia? I think it was very appropriate for Ms Tucker earlier to ask the Labor Party what they would do. It is interesting that, on 27 January this year, Mr Berry was actually asked on ABC radio how he would rein in the cost overruns at Canberra Hospital. But, Mr Speaker, he could not answer the question. No answers, no ideas - nothing has changed from the time when they were in government.

Mr Kaine: You do not have much idea either, Chief Minister.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am very pleased that Mr Kaine made that interjection - although interjections, of course, are out of order - because I would like to actually quote Mr Kaine, who was also very critical earlier of the Government's performance generally in these sorts of areas. Mr Kaine said, according to the Hansard - so it is obviously the truth - when speaking about the budget on 13 May 1997:

It is a good budget; there is no doubt about it. It is a budget that has been produced after eight years of continuing decline in Commonwealth funding of this Territory. It is a budget that followed a reconstruction period following five years of Labor government which left this Territory absolutely denuded of financial resources.

We all know that, just before the last election, the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the ACT had virtually reached zero, and that says something about the financial management of the Labor Party that now purports to tell us how to run the place and how to produce a better budget. Well, they have not done so. Then Mr Kaine went on to say:

... I believe that this budget represents a very fair balancing of demands against the available financial resources of this Territory. It provides a continuing excellent standard of service in education and health.

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