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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1472 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The budget promises an increased expansion of one-third in the number of available day surgery beds at the Canberra Hospital, at face value another welcome move. However, it must be remembered that this is the same Government that has overseen, year to date, a 33 per cent fall in the amount of day surgery at the Canberra Hospital.

One of the indicators driving the economic outlook forecast by the Chief Minister in her budget is modest population growth. Canberra's population is predicted to increase gradually but remain below the national rate. But there is a more pessimistic view in the budget papers relating to health and community care. They predict that the cost of health service delivery will increase as the Territory's population falls from 311,200 in this current year to 309,300 in 1999-2000. Hospital and acute services, for instance, are predicted to rise $21 per head of population; community care services will rise $53 per head of population. This is an intriguing anomaly in this most transparent of budgets - this difference in what the Chief Minister and Treasurer predicts and in what a key agency is working to. It raises the question of rigour. Where else do the underpinning forecasts not gel?

But there is a more glaring and fundamental unanswered question in the budget that relates to health. Nowhere is there any indication that the Government is giving any serious consideration to the question of what we Canberrans want our public hospital system to be. Only when we understand what we need and want, and what it costs to realise and maintain those aspirations, can we calculate accurately what resources need to be applied. This is the fundamental debate the Government needs to lead if we are to successfully come to grips with the cost of the Territory's public health system. This is what is essential if we are to avoid the annual practice of topping up the Canberra Hospital's allocation - $12.9m this year - or having to find the money to meet the budget overrun, which runs to $5m this year. It appears that this Government is concentrating so hard on the crisis it has created at the Canberra Hospital, that it does not have the capacity to provide that leadership.

Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister announced in her budget speech on Tuesday that the Government would maintain, in real terms, funding for government schooling, incurring an additional $5.2m cost to the budget in the coming financial year. An extra $2.7m has been made available to the non-government school sector. Each allocation applies to a separate constituency of this Government. The second, of course, is clear. The Government is proud of its continued commitment to the non-government school sector. This is one component of government election promises that is certain to be honoured.

The first allocation, that which purports to maintain funding in real terms to the government sector, applies, as we all know, to a constituency of one - the Independent Health Minister. The Government, of course, relies in good part for its political survival on Mr Moore. For his part, Mr Moore has made it quite clear that his support for the Government is, in part at least, dependent on at least an appearance of maintenance of real-term funding for government schooling. This Government has no real commitment to public education. Its commitment is to see fewer government schools - and to bribe schools into amalgamating to achieve that aim.

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