Page 1437 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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recruitment. That is true. He does not need to know the details of every person’s employment contract or the details of how many people are employed in every section. But when there is a massive blow-out, it would help to know what the total number of public servants is. When there is a blow-out of 2,000 public servants with a 40 per cent increase in payroll and superannuation in the space of a few years, surely some questions need to be asked.
The Chief Minister, the Treasurer, should be asking questions. He should be asking, “Why is this happening? How can we restrain this growth because this is going to be an ongoing problem for us?” But it seems that no-one has asked the questions and only now are we starting to talk about it. The warnings that were coming from all quarters, from the former Treasurer and the opposition, have been ignored. Suddenly we are faced with this position and the government says, “We did not know it was going to happen.” Well, that is not true. We did know it was coming. We have known it was coming for some time, and nothing has been done about it. That has been the problem, and that is why it has been perpetuated.
I want to deal with some specific areas. It is a matter of priorities. It costs 22 per cent more to treat a patient in a hospital in the ACT than in the rest of Australia. Reining in these costs, making efficiency savings, is part of the issue, and it is a part of the issue that this government has not addressed. Last year at estimates we dealt with this, and the government claimed that we just wanted to slash $100 million from the health budget. We were criticised for identifying efficiency savings.
Last year the government budgeted for an increase of four per cent in health costs. This was despite annual increases in health costs in the last few years in the realm of 10 or 11 per cent. Nationally health expenditure has been increasing by seven or eight per cent per year, but last year the government budgeted for an increase of four per cent. When we asked the health minister how he was going to keep it at four per cent, given that that had not been achieved before, he could not give us an answer. There were no specifics as to how they would rein in those costs, how they would turn around what had been happening under this government over the past few years. Still there are no answers, and the new health minister needs to tell us how these savings are going to be made. As we know, 11 per cent growth will be completely unsustainable. But we have seen no evidence of a plan to actually rein in costs and to deal with the issues.
In the area of education, we all know that school closures are coming. Before the election one party said that there might have to be school closures. One party put their hand up and said that may be a reality. The other party, the Labor Party, the government, said that there would be no school closures in the next term. With the steadily declining rate of enrolment in government schools, they would have known exactly where we would be in 2006. Yet, in 2004, they claimed that there would be no closures. In terms of economic mismanagement, this is where the rubber hits the road. Instead of being honest before the election and dealing with some of the issues, the government is now panicking and flogging off schools and land as quickly as it can. That is not good planning; it is not good policy.
Because of economic mismanagement over the past few years, the government is panicking and making bad decisions. We were honest about the fact that there may have to be school closures, but the point needs to be made that this government was not.
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