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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 254 ..

Mr Berry: Just rule it out.

MR MOORE: Obviously I have to speak slowly. Mr Berry, what I just said for you was that, had this blow-out been to the extent of some $50m or $60m, I would have to say that the hospital is beyond being able to be turned around and in that case we would have to look. I would not be able to then eliminate the possibility of privatising the management.

Mr Berry: Why do you not just rule it out.

MR MOORE: That is not the case.

Mr Berry: Rule it out for the moment.

MR MOORE: That is not the case. I would love to rule it out for the moment. I will rule it out for the moment. Mr Deputy Speaker, it seems to me that those are the issues that Mr Stanhope raised. I believe I have answered each one of them and I take them very seriously. I did not attempt today to get up and ignore the import of this debate. On the contrary, I went through every item, piece by piece by piece, and spoke for quite a long time, trying to deal with one at a time.

I started my speech by accusing the Opposition of being short sighted in its approach in order to distinguish its approach from mine, and it was particularly important in terms of those waiting lists. Let me explain that. Say this minute that I walked out to the Canberra Hospital and said, "I have $10m. I just want it spent on waiting lists". They do not have the surgeons, they do not have the nurses and they do not have the things to be able to do it. It just is not that simple. Nothing you deal with in a hospital is that simple. We have been able to get some improvement in Calvary. I am negotiating with Calvary for even more. I have negotiated with the Canberra Hospital recently, and we have offered them $3m for that. At this stage it looks like they are able to use just over $1m and they are looking at ways to be able to improve their systems so as to be able to use that money. Of course we are trying to make sure we bring the waiting lists down, but I am not going to lose sight of the long-term structural change that is necessary to get the sorts of outcomes we want, and particularly the broad health outcomes in the community.

One of the things I have been really emphasising - I explained it this morning but I will reiterate it very quickly - is working with the GPs, the primary health care sector, so that we can keep people out of hospital. In the long term, the best way to reduce our waiting lists is to ensure that we can keep people out of hospital as far as possible. We need to do some work. An example of that is the diabetes work we have been doing. Another example is the work on asthma. The more we can treat people in their homes, the fewer people with asthma will have to go into hospitals and add to our waiting lists. These are the sorts of long-term issues that I mean when we are talking about restructure.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I do take the motion very seriously, but the amendment drawn up by Mr Humphries gives us the opportunity to do what Ms Tucker suggested to me, and that is to put a very positive approach on this so that we can get people working together and show the hospital staff that this Assembly and the Government would like to work

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