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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4278 ..

MR STANHOPE: Yes, they are. You cannot come into this place and put on the table a document like this one that racks up $200 million in potential expenditure and not tell anybody how you are going to pay for it.

Mr Smyth: How are you going to pay for yours?

MR STANHOPE: Out of the budget. That is the point and that is the difference. This government-

Mr Smyth: What existing programs are you going to cut in the budget to fund your health plan? Out of the budget, fine.

MR STANHOPE: Out of the budget. You did not read the document; it is in there on page 5. That is what it says. The whole point is that this government is responsible and this government understands the basis of fiscal responsibility. We understand that you do not go out and say, "We will do this for the waiting lists. We won't say how much it is going to cost. We won't say where the money is going to come from. We won't say if we are going to cut. We won't say if we are going to increase taxes. We will just put it on the table."It so simplistic, it is so easy, to say that. You know that it will strike a chord, but you will accept no responsibility.

It is irresponsibility of an order we have never seen in this place to rush out such a document, to get it running out in the media, without any analysis of the wonderful things you are going to do, without costing it, and these costs are real costs. That is what it would cost. That is what we are talking about.

As I explained before, you can knock off the category 2 waiting list. If you find the $7 million or $10 million for it, we will do it, but all you are going to do, I will tell you now, is just generate demand because that is the nature of the waiting list. The demand is endless; it climbs and climbs.

Mr Smyth: So we won't try.

MR STANHOPE: No, what you will find is that people will rush here from across the border and actually generate demand within the ACT community. Already we add 700 people a month to the waiting list. That is what we currently do; that is how great the demand is. If you actually deal with it, the list will simply respond. It is never ending; you chase your tail forever. You could never satisfy the demand for elective surgery; it can't be done.

To do it to the extent that you get down to, essentially, no waiting list or a minimal waiting list would cost tens of millions of dollars, just that item by itself. The same point applies in relation to cancer screening. Mr Smyth wants 90 per cent of the category 3 patients to be treated within a year. Currently, about 80 per cent of the category 3 patients are seen within a year. Whichever way you look at it, these claims, these timelines, these targets are simply meaningless. They are not attainable; they are meaningless. Within the context of a $2 billion budget, we do not have another $200 million on top of the $450 million we already provide for health.

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