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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2299 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Kaine, you will find this very interesting. The advice from my department is that this is exactly the same practice as in previous years budget papers. The difference is that this year the government appropriated growth funds within those outputs. The specific initiatives to be funded with the growth funds will be finalised when the contracts are finalised in a short while. They were never going to be hidden. They were never going to be unavailable for scrutiny. As Mr Kaine rightly said, he will have the opportunity to scrutinise these funds, not only in annual reports next year but also in the not too distant future when he looks at the purchase agreements. I know that Mr Kaine will be the person who does that.

Mr Stanhope, the Leader of the Opposition, then went on to talk about the methadone program. He said that this is the worst case ever because we have an eight-week waiting list and 47 places. Last year when there was no waiting time and right through last year while there were no waiting lists, we did not hear him say, "You are going very well, minister." Of course, these things do go up and down. What did we do about it? We allocated $125,000 in the budget to deal with it. We also put processes in place to deal with it and to change our system. The result is that we have been managing to deal with five more people a week, and at this stage I am informed that we do not now have an eight-week waiting list. We have a five-week waiting list, which is still not good enough, and we have 32 people waiting, but we are improving at the rate of five places a week.

Mr Stanhope then went on to talk about indigenous health. He seemed to forget that in the vast majority of cases indigenous health is funded by the Commonwealth. In spite of that, we have added the extra $100,000 he referred to. He then went on to talk about the drug issue for young Aboriginal people, but neglected to mention that we had also put an extra $120,000 into dealing with that issue. It is not being ignored.

I have to ask Mr Stanhope how he would go about funding the indigenous community. Would he just put money in, or would he do what we have been doing and work with the Commonwealth, work with indigenous people and work with the ACT government in a partnership to get a strategy for dealing with indigenous health issues? Having got that strategy, we can determine the appropriate levels of funding and the appropriate way to fund. Unfortunately, going through that process takes time. It is a great frustration that it takes so long, but that is the right way to go about it, and he knows it.

There are a number of other issues that were raised by Mr Stanhope. Hepatitis C was one of them. It was also raised by Mr Osborne. The hepatitis C issue is one that we are still looking at. That did happen before my time and, as Mr Stanhope correctly said, it was not drawn to a minister's attention.

We then had a number of people talking about the nurses at the Canberra Hospital. Mr Speaker, it is of great frustration to me that Mr Osborne is not here in the Assembly more often. It is of great frustration that he is not here at the moment. It is of great frustration that Mr Stanhope is not here at the moment, and it is of great frustration that Mr Kaine is not here at the moment. They raised these issues, Mr Speaker, and I seek to reply to them. Mr Rugendyke, having raised this issue of the supervised injecting room, has now left. This is of great frustration to me because I have the opportunity now to reply to them on those issues, particularly on nurses.

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