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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 493 ..

will take more turns in the short to medium term. However, the basis of this major reform is a more integrated and effective health system.

After today’s debate the issue of most concern to me is not the discussion about the government’s policies and actions in relation to Canberra hospital, as I know they will withstand any detailed scrutiny; I am concerned about the opposition’s increasing tendency to accuse ACT health professionals of inefficiency and laziness. Mr Smyth should reassess his strategy. His main contribution to the health care debate was to constantly run down the efforts of our public hospitals to deliver the health services that are needed by the community.

His agenda is to constantly run down the efforts of health professionals and administrators in our health system who are working assiduously to ensure that Canberrans get the services they need when they need them. On behalf of those who are working to make the ACT health system a better and more efficient place, I say to Mr Smyth: Stop and think again about what you are doing.

MRS DUNNE (4.11): I wish to speak in debate today on this matter of public importance relating to Canberra hospital. We are not debating the clinical school, the unified system or the purchaser-provider system; we are debating the Canberra hospital. When the Stanhope government came into office it injected an additional $6 million of taxpayers’ funds into the public hospital system. The question that opposition members have been asking is: What additional outcomes have Canberrans seen as a result of that additional expenditure?

As Mr Smyth and other opposition members have demonstrated, we have not seen a lot. The latest report of the Productivity Commission shows what a parlous state the health system is in. The Productivity Commission is not referring in its report just to administrative costs; it is referring to the cost-effectiveness of the system as a whole. The Productivity Commission, which is attempting to compare apples with apples, is measuring cost-effectiveness by calculating the number of people who go out the door for every million dollars that is spent in the hospital—separations per $1 million. The Productivity Commission said in its report that Canberra hospital’s performance fell by 12.8 per cent over the period 2000-01 and 2001-02. I quote from the report, which states:

While national cost-effectiveness in providing public hospital in-patient services declined by 7.7 per cent…

So everyone is doing worse. It is just that the ACT is doing conspicuously worse. Between 2000-01 and 2001-02 cost-effectiveness declined by 12.8 per cent. Using the same measure across all hospital systems—separations per $1 million—Canberra was established as having the least cost-effective hospital system in Australia, overtaking the Northern Territory. Members would be aware of the difficulties that are being experienced in the Northern Territory.

The Northern Territory has a much larger indigenous population, much higher impacts on it public health budget, tropical diseases, the tyranny of distance and the difficulty of getting people to hospital, whereas everyone in the ACT lives within 20 minutes of the hospital. People in the ACT do not contract tropical diseases on a regular basis. The performance of hospitals in the ACT is much worse than the performance of hospitals in

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