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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2281 ..

MR BERRY: That is true, all right. So, let us not kid ourselves about your performance on superannuation. You have to reflect on those issues as well when you are trying to paint a picture, otherwise these little gaps will not be filled in properly, and that is one of the gaps that you failed to fill in.

In respect of the money that was contributed in earlier years, you talked boastfully about having contributed more to the emerging liability. That was when you were unloading a whole heap of public servants, and I suspect that had something to do with redundancy packages and there were no options for you because you had to pay out superannuation in any event. If superannuation is due to public servants you have to pay it no matter which government is in office. So I would suggest that this is a nonsense. You dropped off when it came to the optional area-this is where you put nothing in. So you cannot boast that you have done better than anybody else.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Proposed expenditure-Part 8-Health and Community Care, $336,949,000 (net cost of outputs), $31,721,000 (capital injection) and $11,5411,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $380,211,000.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.10): Elements of the budget pertaining to health and community care are a particular concern to many Canberrans. Concern about the health budget has been very much heightened by recent developments at the Canberra Hospital, and residents of Canberra have every right to be concerned. Last Wednesday, for instance, in an article in the Canberra Times entitled "Staff stress puts patients at risk: nurse", a former Canberra Hospital nurse told how stress and overwork had forced her to quit after 10 years of working at the Canberra Hospital. The former nurse stated that the lack of funding and staff training at the hospital was putting patients at risk.

Mr Moore: An anonymous nurse who left 18 months ago.

Mr Berry: She wanted to be an ALP candidate.

MR STANHOPE: On Thursday of last week another article in the Canberra Times entitled "Report into hospital death completed" revealed that nine cases of elective surgery scheduled for that day had been cancelled because the hospital was full.

Mr Berry: They wanted to be ALP candidates too.

MR STANHOPE: Yes. Two of the patients were children. An accompanying article, entitled "Surgery delayed after four years on waiting list", told the story which my colleague Mr Wood repeated today in question time about a Canberra man who has been waiting four years for a knee reconstruction after a sporting accident back in 1996. Really, that man's crime, in effect, was that he was a public patient.

Despite this obvious crisis within the ACT hospital system, the Minister for Health and Community Care still managed, as we know, to secure what is now the infamous $8.8 million discretionary slush fund for himself in this year's budget. I imagine that

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