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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2426 ..

MS CARNELL: That is absolutely true. The Grants Commission penalises us for overexpenditure in the area, which makes it even worse. What does any government do? What did Mr Berry try to do to get his health costs down to the Australian averages? What did he do when it came to nurses? He attempted to move terms and conditions into line with those in New South Wales. He tried to implement triple-eight rosters and other things to bring his costs down to the national average. Why did you do that, Mr Berry? You were attempting to get your costs down.

Mr Berry: No, you are wrong.

MS CARNELL: Okay. Was it Mr Connolly?

Mr Berry: No, it was not him either.

MS CARNELL: It was. Anyway, every government has attempted to get its health costs down to national averages or somewhere in the vicinity of national averages, simply because there is no alternative except, as I said, to increase taxes or to cross-subsidise. There is not another option.

When we have looked at all of the issues regarding hospitals, what have we found? We have found that the ACT is spending significantly above national averages right across the board. It is not all in administration. It is not all in doctors. It is not all in nurses. It is everywhere, including in nurses.

Mr Osborne has suggested that we need to negotiate with the nurses. I totally agree, but we have to negotiate inside the parameters that we have. We have to live within our budget. This Assembly passed a motion of grave concern in the Health Minister because the hospital was blowing its budget. Mr Moore was directed by this Assembly to get his budget back on track. That is all we are trying to do here. Has the health budget been reduced? No, the health budget has gone up every year since we have been in government. We have not cut expenditure.

I think it is important to talk about what we are paying nurses at the moment. Are our nurses hardly done by? Are our nurses paid less than nurses in New South Wales or, for that matter, anywhere else? The answer is no. When you take into account superannuation - and you have to, because that is part of a package - our nurses are the best paid in Australia. Not second best, the best.

Maybe we should look at the cost per casemix-adjusted separation; that is, the nursing cost per patient in our system, adjusted for acuity. Where do our nurses run? Second? No, they run first. They are the most expensive in Australia. It is a pretty big effort to beat the Northern Territory in this area but, boy, have we done it. These are not my figures. They are the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare figures for 1997-98, the latest available figures. We are up there. We have pipped the Northern Territory. Wow, we should be proud! I table those figures. Everybody in this place should look at them.

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