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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4277 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

cost of building a 30-bed facility and he wants us to find $1.5 million a year to run it. Those are the targets in his document.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, he proposes goals for improved health outcomes and injuries, substance misuse, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, all things which we pledged to work towards in the action plan. He actually goes on to say that we need a 5 per cent improvement in each of those. He wants a 5 per cent reduction in a whole range of health indicators as they affect indigenous people.

Other indicators he simply picked out of the air. He suggests that we should be aiming to reduce the average length of stay in hospital by 5 per cent. What is the significance, once again, of the 5 per cent? Is that actually what the community wants, when people are concerned about being discharged quicker when sick? Does this include time spent, for example, in facilities like the convalescence service that we opened earlier this year?

We have talked about some of the specifics of elective surgery. In question time I went to the elective surgery waiting list suggestions Mr Smyth made. His comments just now on having honest and accountable information were really quite amusing and cynical in the extreme, particularly in relation to the elective surgery waiting list website. It needs to be pointed out that it is my government that puts the information on the web, specifically to be more open and accountable. The information was not available anywhere to members of the public under the previous government. We have to question Mr Smyth's focus on the information being based on days and weeks.

I am not sure, again, where the targets that Mr Smyth proposes for elective surgery waiting lists come from, and we need to go through them for the sake of this debate. I mentioned them in question time. He speaks of 98 per cent of category 2 patients having their surgery within 90 days by June 2004. It is so easy to say, isn't it? Just bung it in a press release or bung it in a policy document, as Mr Smyth did yesterday. The Liberal Party's position is that 98 per cent of category 2 patients should have their surgery within 90 days by June 2004. That is easy to say, quick to say, a simple little sentence, and there it is. That promise of Mr Smyth's would cost us between $7 million and $10 million a year to achieve. Just that one little sentence, that quick little sentence that 98 per cent of category 2 patients will have their surgery within 90 days by June 2004, would cost between $7 million and $10 million a year.

It could be done if anybody in this place could find $7 million for me or tell me which $7 million program they are happy to cut, which $7 million program they are prepared to stand up in this place and get out in public with me and say, "We insist the government cut this program. We insist the government close this school in order to fund category 2 waiting lists."Is anybody in this place prepared to come out with me now and say, "We are happy to close three schools. We will propose it to the government. We will actually run the media on it. We will stand in the ditches on it. We will defend this $7 million cut. We will actually close three schools. In fact, we will even agree to close a school in the suburb in which we live, that is how much we are committed to this category 2 waiting list"? Will Ms Tucker get out there and stand in front of the Ainslie Primary School and say, "Close this school so that we can actually reduce the category 2 waiting list. I want this school closed and I demand it"?

Mr Smyth: Nobody is suggesting that.

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