Page 3212 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006

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(2) add new paragraph (3):

‘(3) recognises the Howard Liberal Government’s contribution through:

(a) increased health funding;

(b) funding medical training places at the ANU medical school; and

The first amendment substitutes the word “health” for the word “medical” in subparagraph 1 (a). I assume we are not just talking about doctors in this motion, given the fact that most of Ms MacDonald’s speech was taken up with talk about nurses. Of course, nurses are health professionals, as are other health workers. So, just for the sake of accuracy, that first line has to be changed.

My second amendment seeks to add a new paragraph which recognises the Howard Liberal government’s contribution to tertiary health education in the ACT through its general increases in health funding. The amount of money that the ACT receives from the federal government under the hospitals agreement increased significantly over past years. That money helps to balance the health budget and allows us to send our nurses, allied health professionals and doctors off for training.

Subparagraph (b) of proposed new paragraph (3) calls for the Assembly to recognise the Howard Liberal government’s funding of medical training places at the ANU medical school. Of course, we all know that is a Liberal Party initiative. The school came into being in 2004 with 80 places and will grow to 320 places by 2007. My amendment acknowledges the fact that the federal government is funding these places. Paragraph (3) (c) speaks about funding additional nursing places at the University of Canberra. Indeed, in 2005 there were 40 general nursing places at the University of Canberra, let alone the new places that have gone to the Australian Catholic University. My amendments seek to set the record straight. I am not going to bother to remove paragraph (2) of Ms MacDonald’s motion, simply because the government does put substantial money into health education. However, I think Ms MacDonald’s motion has to be put in perspective.

It is interesting to note that recent statistics show that, except for podiatry, most of the numbers of professionals in the ACT have gone up. According to Australian Capital Territory in Focus, a recent ABS publication from 2006, chiropractor numbers have gone up, dental hygienist numbers have gone up, dental specialist numbers have remained the same, as have dental technician numbers, dentist numbers have stayed the same and medical practitioner numbers went up from 1,945 to 2,046 in 2005. Only podiatrist numbers have declined—from 46 in 2004 to 40 in 2005. If you look at the statistics by occupation you find that in almost every specialty the number has either remained the same or has increased. That is not to say that we do not need more professionals. I think we all acknowledge that we need more, particularly in the area of general practice and nursing. But that is not going to be addressed by the significant decline the health budget has suffered under the Stanhope Labor government in the last two years in respect of training to assist our people to upgrade skills and return to work.

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