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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 63 ..

MR SMYTH: I note there was no denial that he double-dips, so it must be true. I will just read from his press release. It says-

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, please avoid the preamble and come to the question.

MR SMYTH: Here is the supplementary question. Mr Stanhope, you say in the first paragraph of you press release that it is to ensure the survival and viability of the hospital. Then in the third last paragraph you say:

MR SPEAKER: I press the point, Mr Smyth.

MR SMYTH: Will you please detail what extra services the $6 million twice spent will buy?

MR STANHOPE: These issues will be revealed in the appropriation bill this afternoon. I am sure the question is out of order, but I am happy to make the point that within an hour or so the Treasurer will be tabling an appropriation bill that deals explicitly with these issues.

Mr Smyth: If you have the answer, you are obliged to give it to us now under standing orders.

MR STANHOPE: No, that is not the case, if I wish to push the point, Mr Smyth. But I am telling you what is in a bill that is about to be tabled. It will be tabled within an hour, if you care to wait for it. In an hour's time, you will have in your hand a bill which provides for an additional $18 million for the Canberra Hospital. That is what we are doing. We are delivering. We are not engaging in the smoke and mirrors you engaged in. Your 1.3 per cent increase in funding in real terms in the last budget for the Canberra Hospital you tried to sell as an increase of 10.7 per cent. It was not an increase of 10.7 million. You know that was a fiction. You know it was smoke and mirrors. You know that was the budget-to-budget figure, and you tried to sell it as your annual increase in funding to the Canberra Hospital. Your real-term dollar increase in funding for the Canberra Hospital in the last budget works out at about 1.3 per cent.

You funded them in an attempt, I suppose, to control demand. I do not know how you expected or intended them to deliver health services for the people of the ACT with a 1.3 per cent real increase in funding. It simply was not doable, and they did not do it. We are picking up the scraps from the mess you left. As I said before, I think you did it deliberately. You did it knowing you were going to lose the election. I think it reflects very interestingly on your personalities and on your commitment to the ACT and to good, sound management and governance that you would make decisions in the knowledge that you were going to lose the election and that it did not really matter.

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