Page 4423 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
… we are struggling to find any record of the decisions that have led to a point where it looks as though a deal is going to be signed on something that is going to have such a huge impact on the future of Canberra and on our budget.
Ms Gallagher replied:
It is going to have no impact on the future of Canberra, you fool.
Firstly, I think that that is odd that it is going to have no impact, that we are going to go through this deal of spending $77 million, if it is going to have no impact. But we also do see that now they are claiming that it will have an impact. So why are the government doing this? Why are they moving forward with this proposal? I think philosophically and ideologically they do want to control everything. That is, I guess, consistent with the more socialist ideals of the Labor Party and the Greens, that they do wish to see public ownership of institutions. These are institutions that actually do a good job. There are Catholic healthcare providers in every jurisdiction in Australia and they are doing a great job in Sydney, in Melbourne and, as they have done, here in the ACT.
This decision will also remove choice, and I embrace choice. I think that you have got to make sure that you have a variety of healthcare providers in the ACT to provide different types of services and styles of service.
Another justification being put forward by the government is that of the accounting treatment, that you own the asset so that any future investment put into that site appears on the ACT’s books rather than the Treasury books. And the Treasury costings, I note, were done over a 20-year period. The Treasury treatment and the argument for that again show some of the concerns that I have. What we should be doing this deal about and what the proposal should be all about are the health outcomes and the efficiencies—framing it that way—not about a treatment that makes our budget bottom line look better.
My concern is that the health minister, in having a conversation with herself as the Treasurer, instead of advocating for the health outcome, identifying those ideas and articulating them appropriately, is simply putting forward—and you see this when you see the larger justification for this proposal—an accounting treatment to make sure the budget bottom line is better. That again goes to the point I have made previously in this place and in public that you do not have a health minister who is responsible for one-third of the budget double-hatted with the Treasurer who is examining those decisions.
I do have some problems about the detail of the accounting treatment and the justification that has been put forward in terms of the way it is being conducted. If you look at the detail, the depreciation period that has been used is 40 years, and I question whether that is appropriate for all of the assets; certainly the buildings. I do not have a problem with that period; but for some of the non-fixed assets, if it includes all of those, I would have some concerns. And the cost analysis period is 20 years. If you were to use the cost analysis period for the same period as depreciation, you would get a very different result from the $145 million. So you can cherry pick at
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .