Page 2444 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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all going up and the territory is being loaded with a significant debt burden, the ACT public has the right to expect answers on an investment in the order of $100 million. I commend the motion to the house.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Health, Minister for Community Services and Minister for Women) (12.01): I was not intending to speak again, but I just have to respond to Mr Coe’s contribution to the debate. For one, the figure of $100 million has been put around today, and I am not sure where anyone has got that figure from. I understand there was a figure in their paper, but, just for the record, my understanding is that it is certainly not a figure that the government has confirmed, and negotiations are currently underway around price. I have said that a number of times.
Mr Coe said that cabinet members were like directors and the shareholders were the community and that we needed to act like a company. I support the general theme of that. He used it then to twist it into his own argument, but the way directors make decisions is in the interests of the shareholders’ money. Here is the situation: the directors—in this case, the government—a couple of years ago made a decision to invest $9.4 million of shareholders’ money in an ICU at Calvary. That money comes through the company, through the shareholders, it is spent, and that money then sits on a third party’s balance sheet—that is, it is not improving the assets of the company at all. If you use your argument about shareholders and companies—
Mr Coe: Did you take that policy to the election?
MS GALLAGHER: Right, we are changing it now. His little scenario there just is not working now. We are in a situation where we built a subacute facility there. Again, the shareholders generously provided that money. That money is no longer in the company; that asset is no longer in the company, Mr Coe. I think it is a good analogy, and it actually supports my argument a lot more than it supports yours.
Mr Coe then goes on to say that there is a health system in crisis, and this is what we are getting from the opposition—talking down the public health system. They say it is a health system in crisis. I challenge you, Mr Coe, to indicate where the ACT’s public health is in crisis. It is not in crisis. You are a leader, Mr Coe, as much as I struggle to accept that. You are a leader, and if you come in here and say that the public health system in the ACT is in crisis then you need to stand by that. When you talk to your constituents—
Mr Coe: That’s what they tell me. That’s what they tell me.
MS GALLAGHER: No, no, you have come in here and said, “We have a health system in crisis.” Then you go and talk to the doctors and nurses that are currently providing first-rate public health services to this community. That is your point: we have a health system in crisis. Well, you stand by those claims.
We also have Mrs Dunne saying that Calvary provides superior care to the Canberra Hospital. That is what she said in her speech, and I reject that completely. Our public hospitals provide excellent care. It is nothing to do with the governance arrangements;
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