Page 1967 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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than 5,600 separations in 2005-06. There is your answer: there is no crisis, but we are going to ration health. We have had almost 6,000 extra services provided in the current year, but next year there will be only 2,000. We are just going to cut them back.
In mental health services, there has been a reduction in separations from 1,250 to 1,200 but only minimal increases in community-based services to take up that slack. In community health services, there has been no growth in delivery of the major services, but we are going to charge anybody that we can more to cover the ineptitude and mismanagement of Jon Stanhope. In cancer services, to the government’s credit, we are finally getting another lineal accelerator, and a third one is to come, but there has been minimal growth in the number of separations for both admitted patients and non-admitted occasions of service, which clearly indicates that this government expects to continue to send cancer sufferers and their families interstate, because it has not focused on what people need.
If we look at, for instance, early intervention and prevention, there has been absolutely no increase in the estimated numbers of breast screening occasions of service, which again shows that the money being put into cancer is not going to where it is really needed. Let’s get into prevention; let’s stop cancer before it affects people in the way it does. I remind members that the number of screenings is only two-thirds of what the previous government did five years ago, two-thirds of what happened five years ago. That is an appalling situation.
What about the overall cost of the health budget and how is the government going to explain where these cuts are coming from? Over the last three or four years health expenditure has increased by 12 per cent a year. The CPI for health is about seven per cent. This government is going to increase it by only nine per cent. So what are the three per cent of services that are going to be cut out: $700 million at three per cent, $21 million of savings? Where are they to come from? There have been no answers from the government because they have no idea. This is a “we are going to ration health services” budget. What about the reduction in staff? BP4 shows a reduction of only two. The minister has denied that. Who is right? Quite frankly, if they have counted the savings and they are buying more staff, again the budget will be blown before we start.
Let us look at aged care. Minimal attention is given in this budget to aged care, to the needs of those in our increasing cohort of older people. There have been token increases in funding for support for the frail aged, but the Stanhope government do not appreciate the urgent need to get more residential and nursing home facilities built in the territory. What is their answer to that? They are going to increase application fees for development. I am sure that Mr Seselja will have a few words to say about that. Even if land is available, it will still be many years before facilities are opened. You only have to look at the Calvary experience of inordinate delays to learn that lesson.
Let us look at tourism. If you are strapped for cash, you have two options. You expand your base so that you have more people to tax, so you spread the burden, or you just drop it all on top of innocent civilians out there, innocent constituents who have done the right thing. The government has taken the easy option of just pouring the burden of increased taxes, fees and charges onto ordinary Canberrans. Has the government used the five years that they have had and the $900 million of cash above expectation and $250 million of surpluses above expectation to build infrastructure, to create a future, if
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