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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3619 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

43 per cent over the last couple of years, so it is interesting that Mr Hargreaves says, "It is not enough."It is probably not enough because, in this case, this government has been potentially the one making it not enough. The minister may wish to clarify that if he has some figures to hand about how those percentages work and whether or not there has been that drop.

It is interesting that, at the health summit several weeks ago now, Mr Carr said that it is actually what you do with the money, it is actually about spending it more wisely and getting more for the taxpayer. Mr Hargreaves made the point that, yes, the Stanhope government has put large amounts of extra money into health-that is true. However, the taxpayer has not received a visible benefit from it, except for longer waiting lists, which are coming down a trickle but, if you look at the trend, have been heading up significantly since first the Chief Minister, and now Mr Corbell, took control.

We urged Mr Corbell to speak to the federal minister and, when he did it, what he actually found was a minister quite willing to negotiate. What he was able to do was access existing programs, programs that, had he spoken to her earlier, he might have accessed much earlier. It is interesting that the things that he got funding for were all items on which the opposition had been pushing for him to perform better.

Let's go through the items. We have several promises on after-hours access to GPs and GP clinics. I can get the documents down again, but I do not think I need to remind the Labor Party of what its own platform says: look at the trial, see how to make it better, see how after-hours GP clinics in our hospitals were performing, and work out how to extend it to the outer reaches. Two years after they came into government, they have made no effort whatsoever, just obfuscated and balked at the very concept of putting into practise their own policies.

We think that the initiatives to which the local minister has signed up are good initiatives. We expect to see the sorts of outcomes that John Hunter Hospital, in Newcastle, was able to achieve in a cooperative effort with the Commonwealth. Yes, Bob Carr, Labor, New South Wales Premier, worked cooperatively with Senator Kay Patterson, Liberal federal health minister, to achieve better outcomes for taxpayers. They did this in the John Hunter Hospital in a very innovative trial that saw GPs providing services.

Those people who needed immediate care got that immediate care. However, the community got an even greater benefit, because what it did was allow for something like an additional 2,000 elective surgery operations to be carried out at the John Hunter Hospital. I look forward to seeing those sorts of results, through the negotiating skills of Mr Corbell, but also the generosity of the federal minister, who has allowed that to happen.

Mr Hargreaves kicked another own goal. Mr Hargreaves is very good at kicking own goals. He spoke about the two-year delay from the point of approval of aged care beds by the Commonwealth to their delivery into the sector. He called it coming online. That is a matter about which the Planning Minister-Mr Corbell, wearing his other hat-should be condemned, because it is the planning process that is stopping these beds coming online, as Mr Hargreaves called it. It is the planning minister and the planning process

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