Page 2514 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
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level of ministerial competence. I am sure that, notwithstanding the difficulties that the previous minister encountered, at least he had a go at trying to improve the situation.
We also see, of course, that the problem is that the administration costs $14 million more than that of the average for comparable hospitals, but we do not see any evidence that the problem is able to be fixed. The minister said in estimates that he was working on the cost problem but, in fact, he could offer no plan for how he was going to tackle the causes of the inefficiency and offered no hope of securing better value for the taxpayers’ dollar. Indeed, in those discussions, I recall the minister expressed the opinion that they are in discussions with Treasury. If one could take a message from it, one sensed an apparent lack of enthusiasm for that whole process.
Curiously, the government says—and these are not the opposition’s words; they are those of the Treasurer—that the health costs always rise by around seven to eight per cent each year nationally; yet the budget only allows for an average growth of four per cent. There is no doubt that the 2005-06 budget allocation, averaging a four per cent increase per year over the next four years for expenditure growth, represents a marked shift from the pattern of recent years, when expenditure has increased at a rate somewhere in the order of triple the level that is now contemplated.
Even after allowing for plans to increase the efficiency of service delivery, clearly the government is budgeting for decidedly slower growth in public health care than has been the case. It does not really sit very sensibly with a lot of the explanations we have had for growth in waiting lists and the like, much of which has been attributed to an ageing population and the numbers of people racing over the border here for health care.
It seems clear to all but the government that the budget provisions for the health portfolio will be exceeded, perhaps by a substantial amount. Indeed, we suspect that the health minister has little intention of meeting his budget target. I look forward, down the track, to hearing an appropriation bill coming in which will give credence to the predictions that we are continuing to make in relation to the health budget. Indeed, I would say, with a fair degree of confidence, that in the next financial year the government will come back to the Assembly for additional appropriations of at least $30 million for health.
In the course of the estimates hearing, we also had another alarming revelation. It concerned the matter of fringe benefits tax. We managed to flush out a tax arrangement by which all but 87 of the health department’s employees are to be given an FBT exemption for being classified as utilising some of the provisions of the FBT laws under the deductible gift status. Under this deal, the ruse is to classify bureaucrats in head office in this category.
You know when there is a scheme that is a contrivance, and this must surely be it. I pointed out in estimates that subsection (57) (a) (ii) of the Australian Taxation Office ruling—and this was the one that was cited in a memo to employees—says, in part, that the duties of employment of the employee must be exclusively performed. That is my emphasis, “exclusively”, but it is in the decision. It is not associated with or an extrapolation of what happens in New South Wales, which is what Dr Sherbon clutched at during his defence of his actions.
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