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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 2877 ..
MR RUGENDYKE (continuing):
There's not much scope for keeping salaries in the hospital sector competitive without a corresponding impact on employment levels.
The report goes on to say:
The growth needs money-
the slush fund-
represents 2.6 per cent growth on the base. Yet it is supposed to pay for 3.5 per cent growth in outputs, implying even more productivity. Health care is highly labour intensive and Australian earnings have been growing at 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent per annum in recent years reflecting the strong overall growth in the economy.
The report goes on:
It is difficult to see how the expenditure targets can be hit without cutting wages in real terms and/or reducing the workforce. In short, the Budget for the hospitals looks implausible.
Minister, based on this appraisal, will you confirm that workloads for nurses again will be under enormous pressure and that nurse numbers in our hospitals will be facing cutbacks during this financial year?
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, Access Economics publish a number of reports. Certainly the ones that I am most conscious of are the ones that they publish as part of the AMA's local journal. In fact, the person who does that work actually works out of the same office as the AMA. The initial response to the budget was fairly extensive and, because there was a significant inaccuracy there, I was effectively motivated to respond in the same journal-I must say that they gave me a reasonable position-to point out the inaccuracy. When we have a comment from Access Economics we take it, consider it and deal with it.
I think it is important to understand what has happened over the last five years and what we are trying to do with the hospital budget. This government and the first Carnell government have not sought to cut and have not cut the ACT budget. The goal with regard to hospitals has been to contain the hospital budget at the same level with minor increases. All the information we had and still have shows that the hospital system is significantly overfunded-by some 30 per cent.
It may come as a shock, but that is the evidence we have had before us. We are testing that evidence. We are going back through it and looking at it. At the same time, that is the information we have had. We have been successful over the last five years in containing hospital expenditure, much more so than other states, particularly of recent times New South Wales and Victoria, which carry the bulk of costs throughout Australia. If their expenditure goes up, and it has been, that means effectively that without doing any actual cutting the expenses at Canberra Hospital and the Calvary Hospital become comparative. That is what we have been seeking to do and we have been significantly successful with it.
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