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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2885 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

year in the budget for mental health. There was something like $1.6 million worth of mental health initiatives in the last Liberal budget, $300,000-odd more than the much vaunted increase that we have had from our part-time Health Minister.

Mr Speaker, what we have in this government is a lazy approach to health. What we have is an approach that says, "Money will fix it. I don't have to pay attention to it. I have made some promises, but if we don't keep them it will not matter." We also have a secretive approach to health. The government hides behind the banner that it has put in all this extra money and therefore it must be okay, but it is not okay. It is not okay when people have to wait longer for elective surgery.

On elective surgery they say, "How will we cope with it? Labor will, through better staffing practices and more efficient management, increase the throughput of acute care and surgery patients." Through more efficient management, having removed the controls, and better staffing practices, but it did not ask for any, it will increase the throughput of acute care and surgery patients. There is no extra elective surgery. The number of other operations, at first blush, look like they could go from 56,000 to 61,000 this year, but when you add the DVAs, the compensables and the ineligibles, you have just over 1,000 extra operations.

They say that they will ensure better and more open management of waiting lists. I have seen from their draft health plan that they are not going to manage them better; they are just going to make them more accessible. When you are suffering and in pain at 4 o'clock in the morning you will be able to log onto a website and find out where you are on the list. That would be cold comfort to somebody who was waiting.

There was a promise to maintain dental health funding. I do not think that it has been kept at the level promised. And so the list goes on.

Mr Speaker, this budget is a disaster for the health of Canberrans. This budget is the result of a lazy approach in that, instead of keeping tight control and focusing on where to put the money and setting priorities, setting an agenda, on how to deal with health, the government is saying, "We have given you extra money. There is no more. You can't whinge. Don't come back to see us."

The problem that will emerge for the government come September or October will be its response to the Gallop report. For instance, I suspect that the disability sector will come back expecting a large amount of money. Already we have heard from Mr Wood that there is no more money and we have heard from the part-time Health Minister that there is no more money. The question is: what will they do then? I look forward to getting the answer.

Mr Speaker, this lazy health budget shows that, for all the glib lines in the lead-up to the election, we have a Health Minister who cannot, who will not and who does not control the health system, who is unable to do so because I do not think he pays enough attention to it. The best thing Jon Stanhope could do for the health system of the ACT would be to hand it over to another minister.

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