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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 401 ..

MR STANHOPE

household insurers pay for those who could not be bothered. It was much more an uncaring budget than a caring budget. It, too, had a rabbit. All of Mrs Carnell's budgets have rabbits. The rabbit that was pulled out of the hat last year was the amazing stratagem of requiring ACTEW to buy the city's streetlights for $100m. This year the Chief Minister has run out of rabbits. There are no more magic tricks to be had. But, of course, there is still the smoke and mirrors. That is the reason for today's debate - to confuse the issue, to disguise the fact that this Government has run out of ideas, that it has suddenly discovered that it does not have the capacity, that it is all too hard, that it does not know what to do.

Paragraph 2(a) of the Chief Minister's motion refers to ensuring responsible fiscal management of the Territory. Of course, one has only to peruse the latest ACT consolidated financial management report - for the month and financial year to date ending 31 January 1999 - to see that that is a concept alien to the Health Minister, Mr Moore. According to the figures - and the Chief Minister did allude to this - Canberra Hospital's anticipated deficit for the year stands at $10.4m, up from the $5.5m anticipated only a month before that. The $5.5m blow-out was bad enough, but $10.4m is a serious escalation and one that seems beyond the Health Minister, as this Assembly found when we last met. If the Chief Minister is serious in the concern raised in her motion over appropriate levels of expenditure, she must surely take issue with Mr Moore over the arrangements he has made to duplicate payments - for instance, the double payment of the CEOs. We have, for our sins, two CEOs at the Canberra Hospital, each being paid $250,000.

It is beyond comprehension that this Government can justify throwing good money after bad on financial consultancies and yet consistently fail to meet its projected health budget. As one local commentator pointed out recently, the real issue this year will be whether the Government can convince the Assembly and the community that it has made any improvement at all since 1995 in handling the Territory's financial affairs. That, of course, is the challenge for the Government in today's debate, to illustrate that it is up to the job.

Mr Speaker, it is of genuine concern to me that the Chief Minister makes reference in her motion to what assets the Territory should maintain or sell and the reasons why they should be maintained or sold. This is a government, after all, which would not put the sale of ACTEW on its election eve agenda but which was bent on ignoring public opinion in its rush to sell the utility. It is a government whose Health Minister will not rule out selling the Canberra Hospital or part of its operations. Given this Minister's ability to change course, it is not stretching the imagination to conjecture that, if the hospital becomes too much of a financial hardship, the Minister will simply advocate full-scale privatisation. As we have seen over the last 12 months, the Chief Minister and her Government are not averse to a fire sale in an attempt to balance the books.

Last budget we saw Mr Moore attempt to reduce the excessive elective surgery waiting lists by allocating an additional $3m. He is the Minister who took office with $16m in his back pocket from the Commonwealth after the Chief Minister signed off early on the Medicare agreement. Despite that enormous influx of funding, the waiting list is stuck higher than ever. The Minister had an additional $19m-plus to deal with elective surgery

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