Page 5178 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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MR SMYTH: Well, he is saying it.
Ms Gallagher: And nobody—
MR SMYTH: Good; you get up. I will give you leave to stand up and debunk this, but you have not. He goes on to say: “The ACT Treasury provided four charts in their analysis; three of these charts are entirely meaningless.” So with respect to the consultation documents—the documents informing this debate, according to a gentleman who I believe is a professor of economics—three-quarters of it is meaningless. That is what he is saying. He goes on to say that part of this is based on cash flow. He talks about the fact that, when you include cash flow in a discussion, there are six basic principles. He goes on to say: “It is my opinion that ACT Treasury have not followed these criteria when undertaking the analysis.”
If you go to the academics, if you go to people who know about this, they say there are six criteria. What Sinclair Davidson says is that they do not follow those criteria. It would be interesting to have the Treasurer speak about this; she can have leave after lunch to come back and speak about it. I am sure we would like to hear it. His final paragraph is as follows:
It seems that the ACT Government are concerned that the public hospital may be cross-subsidising the private hospital, yet it is not clear why they have this concern or why they would care if it did in fact occur. The ACT Government does not own the Calvary Hospital, and contracts on a fee-for-service basis. At best, the ACT Government has a view that they are paying too much for the service that they receive, but if they wish to reduce ACT Health expenditure, they should state that desire clearly. The ACT Government needs to demonstrate that they are not getting value for money from the current arrangement at the Calvary Hospital, and as best I can see they have not made that argument, nor have they produced any evidence to support that view. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that ACT residents prefer the Calvary to the Canberra Hospital.
So it does get back—
Ms Gallagher: That is rubbish.
MR SMYTH: I am quoting the gentleman. You debunk it if you want.
Mr Hanson: Read the annual report.
MR SMYTH: Read the report and debunk it. You have got the criteria wrong, three out of your four charts are meaningless, even the economic case is not made, and we do not see any health benefit for the people of the ACT.
That brings us back to Ms Bresnan’s motion and why we are here. The ACT Greens had the opportunity, when Mr Hanson moved his motion, to have a comprehensive analysis of all of this material by somebody eminently capable of doing that—the Auditor-General of the ACT.
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