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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2101 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

a major teaching hospital with a significant penalty to be paid, in a way, by us for its so-called efficiency.

It did not take into account the fact that there is a unique mix of public and private patients at the Canberra Hospital, a unique mix which impacts quite dramatically on the hospital's capacity. We are down to around two per cent of people accessing the Canberra Hospital who utilise private health insurance, a statistic that no other hospital in Australia matches or comes anywhere near.

It does not take into account the fact that, with the co-location of the National Capital Private Hospital, a whole range of what are regarded as fee-paying, profitable patients-the workers compensation payment patients, the veterans patients and other insurance patients-all went to the National Capital Hospital or to John James. They were filtered out of the system, which left us with a hospital providing care almost exclusively to patients that are public patients. None of these things were taken into account until a couple of months ago, with the government realising it was making no headway. We had a hospital where morale was low to non-existent and the nursing work force were in almost open revolt at what was being expected of them and the pressures they were under.

This was despite recognition in the NATSEM report that there was a whole range of factors that required the hospital to be feed differently. Despite those things, we find as recently as two weeks ago wholesale absences from work as a result of stress-induced sick leave and a hospital buckling under the pressure of the demands that cannot and will not be met-despite the minister's admission that he was wrong in relation to the cost constraint. I have the Canberra Times article here.

Mr Moore: No, you're wrong about the stress. I don't mind saying you are entitled to say it. But get it right.

MR STANHOPE: I am talking about the hospital funds and the NATSEM report. The Canberra Times article I have is headed "Government wrong on hospital funds: Moore." It is about the government's admission that they had made a mistake, that they had been seeking a level of efficiency from the Canberra Hospital that was simply unrealistic and unreasonable and that Mr Moore, the minister, admitted that they had been wrong for the last five or six years.

The difficulty we now have is that the minister has gone out saying, "Mea culpa. We've been wrong for five or six years. We've got the NATSEM report, and we're now going to fix it." In his budget day press releases, he said, "We're going to fix it with an 11 per cent funding increase to the Canberra Hospital." I think the statements were deliberately designed to create an impression that the hospital was actually receiving 101/2 per cent or 11 per cent funding over and above the funds that were provided to the hospital for the last financial year.

Of course, that is not the case. As the minister explained, that was really the fine print. It was 10.7 per cent since the last budget. But the hospital did not cope during the year, and it was topped up two or three times during the year to the point where the actual increase in funding in this budget for the Canberra Hospital over the anticipated end result for the year is something like 1 per cent. It is around 1 per cent, despite the fact that over that

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