Page 1959 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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easiest round of negotiations ever. What are they going to do—turn the heating off as well at Christmas and say they are saving more money? This is the sort of response that we are getting from this government.
The result, of course, of Ms Gallagher’s poor capacity to negotiate industrial relations was that the taxpayers of Canberra paid out millions of dollars for no gain. What the minister does not understand is that productivity growth is the only way to achieve substantial gains in living standards. It is a case of working smarter and finding better ways of doing things. Frankly—and I am not sure my colleague Mrs Dunne agrees—I do not think my measure of productivity is telling teachers, many of whom give up their evenings and weekends, that 15 minutes more contact hours is some demonstration of great productivity. We want to see a better-run health system, a more efficient health system, and to ensure that the serious issues are tackled, rather than these tokenistic things that fail to recognise the real problems in the education system. The sorts of pronouncements that are in the budget papers do not tackle the fundamental concerns that exist in education. There is much evidence that there is scope for improving productivity in Canberra’s public hospitals by changing staff structures and work practices, which date back to the old commonwealth days. I am happy to talk about education, Mr Barr. Two days ago I asked my daughter, “Tell me about your classroom.” She said, “Well, dad, there is a bit of a divide there. We often are all together in our class.” I said, “How many years in your class?” She said, “Years 4, 5 and 6.” I said, “Really. That is interesting. How many when you are all in one class?” She said, “Fifty-seven.”
As a post-war baby boomer in the catholic system in the sixties, seventies and eighties, we used to live with those things. But I thought we had moved on from that era. This is the sort of thing that troubles parents who actually care about their children’s situation. Instead, we will be focusing on making the teacher have 15 minutes more contact. That will be the solution, apparently.
The government’s poor management is one of the main contributing factors to high and rising health costs. For year after year under Labor, forward estimates for health provided for annual growth rates of five to six per cent, but actual expenditure inevitably turned our to be 11 to 12 per cent. Last year, at the convention centre breakfast, I predicted that we would move to GFS reporting. At the time I was howled down by the government. I was told, “GFS is a stupid idea, Mr Mulcahy.” Suddenly I am reading all these pronouncements by Mr Stanhope, and they have an incredible sense of familiarity.
They are very, very familiar words: we have moved to GFS because it is a great system; we recognise that the health costs are considerably above what we budgeted for. It is remarkable. I just wish we could get a little credit for having identified these problems at least a year ago. The government persisted with problems and failed to take corrective action; they failed to make provision with that windfall of $900 million when they had the opportunity.
It is quite puzzling that the government would plan for a five per cent growth in expenditure in health knowing all along that the result would be more than double that amount. Why did they keep repeating the same charade? I really would like to see a firm plan for reform in health and a much greater commitment from the government to achieving actual genuine results. There is a lot that can be done. Canberra’s public
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