Page 1854 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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will you now explain to the Canberra community what your government will do with your surplus?
MR STANHOPE: We will continue to invest in government services for the people of the ACT. We will continue to unravel the damage that the Liberal Party did in government. We will continue the record levels of investment, for instance in mental health. Under the two Liberal Party health ministers, Kate Carnell and Michael Moore, mental health expenditure was the lowest of any jurisdiction in Australia. How shameful is that? The most prosperous community in Australia—under the Liberal Party; under Kate Carnell and Michael Moore—invested less in mental health than any other jurisdiction in Australia.
We will continue our record of investment in mental health. Since coming to government, we have increased expenditure on mental health by 92 per cent. We will continue the massive historic levels—and increase them—of investment in child protection. This is an area where we have increased expenditure by about 150 per cent since coming to government. That is what we will do.
We will continue to unravel the dismantling of bed ratios within our public hospitals. We will continue the process of increasing incrementally the number of beds, having now at last overhauled the 100-bed cut that the Liberal Party introduced into our public hospitals while in government. We have now made up the difference. We have undone the damage. We have undone the damage of the 100-bed public hospital cut—a legacy of Bill Stefaniak and Brendan Smyth. We will continue to increase the number of beds within our public hospitals. We will construct a new psychiatric facility at the Canberra Hospital—a state-of-the-art facility. We will construct a forensic mental health facility.
We will continue to invest heavily in our emergency services—an area in which we have almost doubled expenditure since coming to government; where we have undone the traditional low levels of investment in our rural fire service, in our urban fire service, in our ambulance service. We inherited from the Liberal Party the historic low levels of investment in our emergency services, which of course are part and parcel of the mix in relation to issues we faced in 2003—the seven years of under-investment in our emergency services.
We will continue the historic high levels of investment. We will continue to invest as heavily as we are in education. In the last two years alone there has been an additional $320 million of investment in public education in the Australian Capital Territory. That is massive; that is unprecedented. Do a comparative analysis across Australia of the pro rata level of investment by this government in public education against that of any other state and territory in Australia, even before that level of investment. Go out and do your sums; do the comparison.
Have a look at whether any other government in Australia, on a pro rata basis, is investing anywhere near the $320 million which this government has committed to public education in the last two years. It is unprecedented, unheralded. There is no level of investment of that order anywhere in Australian in public education. It is a reflection of our commitment to public education and the need to ensure that we maintain our position as the leading jurisdiction in Australia in the context of educational outcomes, just as we do in relation to health outcomes.
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