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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2112 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

anything. He said that the government did not do this, did not do that, did not do the other. Many of the things he said I did not do I did. Most of the things he said I had not taken into account we did take into account.

But in many ways we have had our hands tied in dealing with the hospital. All the evidence in the first couple of years I was minister was that the hospital was inefficient. I agreed with the board that a report ought to be commissioned. The board checked with me on how I felt about that. I said I thought it was a worthwhile exercise. The NATSEM report indicated to us that we ought to take a different approach. We have done that. We have removed the efficiency dividend.

When Mr Quinlan or Mr Stanhope say that hospital funding has increased by only 1 per cent, it is worth remembering a couple of factors. We have removed the efficiency dividend. The logical comparison to make is between the last budget and this budget. It is stupid to do a comparison with a year we have not even finished yet. We budgeted a certain amount. We got the cross-border funding. We use that in an effective way to make sure that we deliver better health care in our hospital and better health care right across our community. A couple of million dollars extra went into disability services. Comparing against an anticipated result, as Mr Quinlan does, is quite silly.

We have had an opportunity this budget and over the last couple of years that we could never possibly have had had we still had the $344 million operating loss the Labor Party left us. They can continue with the notion of missed opportunity if they like. That is the best they can think of. There were some missed opportunities in this budget. There were missed political opportunities. There is no question about that.

We sat down with four themes and worked through them. We knew that when we dealt with early intervention, poverty and innovation it would not deliver short-term political outcomes. So there were missed political opportunities. When you talk about early intervention, you are not talking about something you can deliver politically right now. It is by its very nature a long-term process. Whilst tackling poverty might be useful for some of my constituency, that constituency is not the standard constituency of the Liberal Party or a Liberal government. So there were missed opportunities in that sense. I think that is a reasonable statement.

But then followed a series of nonsensical statements by Mr Stanhope, later reiterated by Mr Berry, about a total breakdown with the nurses and a total lack of goodwill. I remind Mr Berry that on Sunday, while I was pushing the Canberra Hospital bed around the lake in the Terry Fox Fun Run and almost dying in the process, Mr Berry ran past me going at 100 mile an hour, as he does when he is running. He was not running with nurses. I am not quite sure what was happening. Maybe they remembered what he was like to deal with when he was the minister for health. To suggest that there was a total breakdown is simply nonsense.

I did admit in this house that I had been wrong in my reference to a wildcat strike by the nurses. It appeared that way at the time, but when I realised that I was wrong and I realised the stress that applied to nurses in the emergency area, I said I was wrong. That is not something we see ministers or any members do regularly in this place, and it is certainly not something I relish. There is no doubt that the pressure on the emergency

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