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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 2531 ..
MR STANHOPE: No-the trend between July and October 2001, when they started trending up again. They went from 3,599 to 3,731 between the July figure and the October figure before the election.
Mr Humphries: So what are they now?
MR STANHOPE: You are interested in the history of the numbers; let me go through the history of the numbers.
Mr Humphries: No, I am not.
MR STANHOPE: Yes, you are. This is all about your preoccupation with the history of the numbers between July 2001-when you were the Chief Minister, Mr Humphries, and we know what a distant memory that must be for you now-and October 2001, when the numbers started to go up again, to 3,731. And you are quite right: the figure for July 2002 is 3,921. I did say, in the Assembly yesterday, that the number was 4,054-
Mr Humphries: And to the Estimates Committee.
MR STANHOPE: And to the Estimates Committee. I understand that the figure of 4,000, which I have checked again, was an August figure. So there are two figures there. First, there is a 3,921. There is some confusion around this; I understood it to be an August figure. But we are talking now about the bit between 3,921 to 4,054. As I understand it, one is a July figure and one is an August figure.
I know the depth of your interest in these numbers and have regard to the fact that at the time we took government the waiting list was 3,731 and is now about 4,000. So, yes, there has been an increase of 190-200 people on the waiting list in the first 10 months of the Labor government. I do not know how I will live it down but, yes, there are about 200 more people on the waiting lists at Canberra and Calvary hospitals.
Mr Humphries: You sound really upset about it, don't you?
MR STANHOPE: I am not at all upset about it-in the context of the achievements. As you know, in the second appropriation bill we provided an additional $8.7 million to the Canberra Hospital. We purchased with that additional money a whole range of things. We purchased some additional workers compensation-$1.7 million was expended on workers compensation. That was a mandatory expenditure; we had no option in relation to that. The previous government had not provided any funding, so we were actually filling gaps.
Mr Smyth: Maybe they put it up because they knew they were going to put it into workers comp.
MR STANHOPE
: The $1.7 million for workers compensation in the Canberra Hospital, which we paid for in the second appropriation, was mandatory expenditure. It was the sort of stuff you cannot not pay-the sort of stuff you provided no moneys for in your
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