Page 2123 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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was meant to be completed by June 2009; it is now October 2010. The Canberra Hospital campus was meant to have a secure adult mental health unit—the adult mental health in-patient facility. That is failed now; after eight months of planning, they have realised that it cannot accommodate.
It is also interesting to note that there are aspects in this budget that are simple re-announcements—the mental health assessment unit and the surgical assessment and planning unit. In total, for this budget, just in health alone, $57.8 million has been rolled over from last year’s budget. How on earth does that give us any confidence that we will have the hospital system that we need and the health system that we need delivered on time, on budget and within scope? It clearly will not occur.
In recent times, perhaps the best example of this lack of vision, lack of planning and lack of capability from this government is the latest fiasco with Calvary Hospital—a secret plan to purchase a hospital that is now failing. It is in limbo through botched negotiation. It is unclear where these negotiations actually sit, but if they fail it is apparent that this government has absolutely no plan, no idea what it is going to do about the development of our hospital facilities in the north of Canberra.
Whether we buy them or not seems to be a question that even the government cannot answer, because of its flawed negotiations. But the question still remains—and the government is yet to provide us with the answer—of why it is best for this community to spend $100 million repurchasing an asset that the community actually paid for in the first place. The reality is that a lot of the additional money that is being spent on health is simply playing catch up in areas of acute need in our hospitals and important things like cancer services.
On one hand the government is spend, spend, spend, but on the other hand we note in the budget papers that it will be looking for efficiency dividends. When Mr Seselja raised the figure of $19.8 million over the forward estimates, the Treasurer was unaware of this figure and disputed it. I suggest that she turn to page 100 of budget paper 3, read her own document and get across the details; then she will see those figures.
What this suggests to me is a government that has put the onus of savings back on the health department. It is unlikely that they will be able to make those savings without cutting into services—important services that need to be delivered to the community. This is a government that has been too lazy and has lacked the vision to identify where these savings could be made elsewhere within the budget. Those in the government have simply been sitting on their hands, putting their heads in the sand and ignoring the need to make efficiencies and make decisions themselves.
What scares me also is that there are $97 million of further savings to be made, but this government has yet to have an idea about where they will be coming from. And if they are so willing to target health in the first round of identified savings, it is certainly of concern to me that a portion—and probably a significant portion—of that $97 million will again come from health, where we can least afford to be delivering money to cover up for this government’s mismanagement in the handling of the budget.
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