Page 1966 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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case. What they have done is they have said, “Let’s just throw taxes on. Let’s make everybody pay a burden for our ineptitude.” That is what they are doing. Jon Stanhope will reach into the pocket of every taxpayer in the ACT and lift several hundred dollars in the coming year because of his ineptitude. But what he will do will not fix the problem, because the budget has gone up. The budget has gone up by about $80 million.
We have this crisis whereby we are spending too much money. He tells us that we are spending too much money, that we spent 20 per cent above the national average, but this budget employs, according to the figures, 500 more public servants and spends an estimated $80 million more than last year. We are actually employing more and spending more, and that is Jon Stanhope’s idea of reining in the budget and getting things back under control. That does not add up. It does not add up in health, in aged care and in the tourism and business programs that have been cut.
In the health budget the community is being subjected to Jon Stanhope’s smoke and mirrors approach to health funding. The government says that health funding has been increased by $41 million. Sorry, the Chief Minister says that health funding has been increased by $41 million. In fact, as you pointed out yesterday, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker Gentleman, because you can do the maths, it has actually gone up by $61 million, by the numbers in the budget. Whose answer is right? Is it the Treasurer’s answer or Katy Gallagher’s answer? They are both right. So, under the new maths, 41 equals 61. That is how fiscal problems are solved in the ACT under Jon Stanhope. All numbers equal the other. There is no problem; therefore, there is no crisis. It might be that Ms Gallagher was moved from the education ministry because she cannot do new maths, but you can, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker.
We have increases of $22 million or $23 million in initiatives, but we also have a transfer of costs. When I asked the minister yesterday what was the value of those costs, she could not tell me. We can see that they have to spend $16 million more on superannuation, and $6 million more is being spent on health insurance. There is an amount of $11 million for what appears to be lost revenue, so that has to be covered. There is at least $3 million in additional wage costs. The Chief Minister says that the budget has gone up by $41 million. I can account for $36 million of that $41 million that is the result of things that have to be funded but do not actually deliver one single extra service of care in the ACT. How the $5 million covers $23 million worth of new initiatives is beyond me. The numbers in the budget just do not add up and the ministers just do not have answers.
According to my maths, there has been a real increase of either $5 million or perhaps $25 million. Either way, it will not fund what we need, and we have still got the processes wrong. We have still got a system that is overly bureaucratic and not patient focused, and that is the problem. The answer under Jon Stanhope has always been “I’ve got bucketloads of money; if I throw enough money around it will fix the problem”. It does not work that way, and that is why we have a problem today. The ineptitude and the budget mismanagement of that approach have landed Canberrans in the trouble that they are in today.
Let’s look at some of the health indicators in budget paper No 4. They show an alarming picture for the future of health in the financial year 2006-07. For acute services, there is an estimated increase of only 2,000 separations, whereas there was an increase of more
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