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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 365 ..

Ms Tucker: Not in print.

MR MOORE: Not printed? Okay, Ms Tucker.

Ms Tucker: You were selective in what you printed.

MR MOORE: Ms Tucker says we were selective in what we wrote, but it is there visually in the graph, the down arrow and the words "improvement needed". It is there for you to see clearly. Ms Tucker, I am going to take on notice the specific question as to why the information was collected in this way. I do know that Community Care, in seeking to improve their service, goes out and asks people, "Where are we doing well; where are we doing badly?" and then continues to improve the service. They publish the results and identify some of the areas where they are doing well and some where they are doing badly.

The results show "Long-term availability of service" with an importance rating of 8.9 and a performance rating of 7.9 and "Staff find solutions to need" with an importance rating of 8.8 and a performance rating of 8.1. These are very good results. They are not perfect, but they say that things are going very well.

I remind members that the withdrawal of Federal funds from our dental service has been going on for some time. If my memory serves me correctly - I think it does - the Federal Labor Government in about 1995, having run a dental program for some time, said, "We are pulling out of this", and the Labor Government made the decision to pick up the shortfall. I think it was a good decision. But considering that this Territory is trying to get its finances into a reasonable state, it was a difficult decision made by the Labor Government and then taken over by the Liberal Government and continued under me as Minister for Health. There are long-term pressures on it.

I am not for one minute saying that the increase in waiting time for restorative work is a good thing. It is a bad thing, but we are still setting our priorities and working in the most effective way we possibly can.

Ms Tucker, that is not to take away from the good news. Yes, there is one bit of bad news. Kofi Annan the other day at the National Press Club gave the example of a teacher coming into his class of young men. It must have been an all-boys school, by the way he described it. The teacher put a little dot on the corner of a very large whiteboard and he said, "Boys, what do you see?". To a person, they all said, "We can see a black dot". He said, "Yes. The trouble is that none of you saw the big whiteboard. All you saw was the black dot". Ms Tucker, all you are seeing is the black dot. There is some fantastic stuff going on in community care and general health. Look at that as well. At the same time, we are going to work on the black dot.

MS TUCKER: I ask a supplementary question. You will probably have to take this on notice, but could you tell us exactly how much ACT Community Care spends on producing this advertising material? Could you also let me know whether or not you think it might be useful to develop some sort of regulation to ensure integrity in advertising from government service providers?

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