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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (18 November) . . Page.. 4216 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

costs rose. We achieved good results in the hospital system: we reduced the hospital waiting lists, we increased the real levels of in-patient activity, we worked to bring down those terrible levels of overdue surgery patients and we strived to make sure we had real outcomes for the most urgent cases who needed to be seen. At the same time, we maintained a very high standard of attention time in the emergency department.

Under the government, there is a drift away from that to, "If you spend more, it will be better."We are not seeing that outcome. We are seeing a decline in confidence in the system, people waiting longer, longer lists and a more costly service. Under this government, there is no focus on primary care. Instead, there is a hazy, lazy focus on allowing costs to increase at the service provider institutions and waiting to see if anything happens. The claim, before the last election, that a $6 million injection would fix the system is exactly what I am talking about.

The Chief Minister served as health minister for 14 months. He took little interest in it, and we saw little real gain for the people of Canberra. Mr Corbell, who is best described as unenthusiastic about the portfolio, has shown little interest in developing a vision of his own, such as the vision we had of people first and a primary care focus. He has done nothing but attend to administrative demands, react to issues when they are raised and, in the main, simply go through traditional health minister politics, such as waiting lists.

In the last two years there have only been two significant events under the administration of this government. The first was the totally unnecessary and highly costly merging of the public health agencies into the bureaucracy, something that was meant to give "more efficient and accountable"health services in the ACT. That has certainly not occurred. As reported in the annual report, there was a blow-out-$38 million above the initial expenditure-and an operating loss of $19 million. That is hardly a testament to sound financial management.

The other key decision of the government seems to have been to cut funding to Calvary Hospital's surgery services-and not just cut them. The then health minister, now the Chief Minister, admitted in estimates that he knew there would be some pain. So what he did was cut them. "We knew there would be some, and we've come back this year with proud boasts of how we've increased funding to Calvary Hospital."

The truth of the matter is that Calvary funding is still below the level we left it at two years ago. It is hardly something to be proud of. Calvary funding was $25.8 million in the 2001-02 budget, the budget we put in place. It was $22.4 million last year. The budget for the current year has risen back to $25.7 million. It is still $100,000 below the level of two years ago. There is no CPI, there is no accounting for growth in the population of the ACT and the increasing demands on public health. It is absolute abandonment. Yet you dress it up as though you have increased funding. You still have not reached the total that we left.

And what was the outcome? The outcome was the closure at Calvary of surgical theatres for 14 weeks. Surgery was denied ordinary Canberrans for more than a quarter of the year because this government does not have a focus on primary health care, on health prevention or on health enhancement to get the best value that we can from our health dollar. It is incredibly cynical to say that you are increasing your health dollar when you have not even reached the target or the model that we left you.

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