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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (13 December) . . Page.. 271 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

about whether the right number of nurses have been allocated to the particular needs of patients at any given time. There is $500,000 there for that, for example, in 2001-02 that will not be there in the outyears, but there is no need for it then because it is for a system to be set up.

If you look at the expenditure on equipment, you will find that there is about $3 million for that in 2001-02 and $2.7 million in 2002-03. They are also one-off expenditures; they are not covered in the outyears. The first one for $3 million, as I understand it, is for cancer equipment. That is going to be for introducing-

Mr Humphries: What page are you reading from, Kerrie?

MS TUCKER: That is what I got from a briefing. Did you ask for a briefing? I do not know whether it is in there. If you asked for a briefing, you would have got this information.

Mr Humphries: I did.

MS TUCKER: If you asked for a briefing and did not get it, I am interested to hear that. I do not know why you did not get one. But this is what I asked for and this is what I have come to understand. So there is an explanation for that movement from $8.7 million to $6 million, which is about what the money is being spent on. You will see that the expenditure on nursing continues. That is consistent throughout the four years. Obviously, that is not a one-off. The throughput money for opening beds actually increases over the years. It starts off at $870,000 and goes up to $1 million.. The Comcare premiums obviously are an issue. They are higher at this point because the government had not realised that there was money owing. They will go down a little bit over the next three financial years. That explains the reduction there.

I am reasonably satisfied that this bill makes sense. I understand what is being bought by this money. It is clearly something that has been needed for a long time. We have been seeing a need to improve the resourcing of the hospital and that, as far as I can understand it, is exactly what this bill is doing. That is why I am quite comfortable with supporting it. I am not saying that I think that the provision of this money is going to solve all the problems. I know that the hospital has been thrown into a reactive mode for years. I do not know that this bill is going to deal with the situation enough to allow the hospital to move into proactive management of medical and surgical health care.

There are broader issues about access to primary health care for people on low incomes-the preventive work generally, primary health care and so on-as Ms Dundas mentioned; but, in terms of the hospital, this bill seems reasonable. A lot of the rest of the appropriation, as has been covered, is to do with commitments made by the previous government as well as some initiatives of this government, including the nature conservation expenditure, which I do not think is going to be enough but is a start.

I have read the paper on the knowledge bank and the proposal there seems to be a positive move, as is the one concerning a knowledge-based economy board. There is provision for solar hot water rebates and the Downer/Woden cycle link. All those things are consistent with what Labor went to the election on and it seems reasonable to support them.

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