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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4293 ..

Mr Stanhope: That is garbage. What about all the staff?

MR SMYTH: I spoke yesterday-

Mr Stanhope: Aren't you going to pay them?

MR SMYTH: They are your commitments.

Mr Stanhope: Aren't you going to pay all these staff?

MR SMYTH: You say there are extra staff required. You say there are extra programs. You say there is extra software. You say there are extra computing systems. You say it, but you will not tell us where you are getting the money from. You are not telling us what you want to cut in your plan of action. It is called the HAP-perhaps it is the hapless action plan, because nothing is going to come out of it.

I spoke yesterday about bureaucracies getting out of control with the removal of restraints such as purchaser/provider, and I must confess I did not expect the health department to burst such a gasket so quickly. Perhaps it is just the minister's office and it has been making all these decisions.

This outburst does raise a question, though. If I have targeted 30 of the almost 132 points-I think I heard you say earlier-in his action plan, and he claims my interpretation of his plan costs $200 million, what does that mean for the all-up target? If I have only gone for 30 out of 130, that means that, by his bizarre mathematical formula, the all-up cost is something closer to a billion dollars. I am not going to come back next year and set more targets for him if he does not come up with reasonable targets by June.

The next florid release from Mr Stanhope claimed, and I quote, "The Libs want needle exchange at Quamby."This is patent misrepresentation. My target suggests that we would eradicate needle sharing amongst detainees. Of course, one way of doing that is through a needle exchange, but another fairly obvious one would be to stop needles from getting into the system in the first place.

Aside from that, I might remind Mr Stanhope that pharmacotherapy is administered to detainees intravenously by a nurse in the remand centre, so we actually already have a safe injecting room at the remand centre. As I said when we started, this motion is essentially very simple. All it does is take the action plan and put in some reasonable, tangible, and attainable targets by which we can measure its success. It is not a grand conspiracy, it is not the end of the world, it is simply what the health community wanted from the health plan in the first place.

We heard Ms Tucker mention all the groups that talked about these: ACTCOSS, the nurses federation, the consumer network and the salaried medical officers said this is basically nothing more than a glossy brochure if it does not set targets. We have now heard from the part-time health minister that it is now nothing more than a glossy. It is simply what the health community wants.

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