Page 124 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010

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(a) the report on Government Services 2010 published by the Productivity Commission in January 2010 that delivered a scathing appraisal of the performance of the ACT Labor government;

(b) the general lack of efficiencies within the ACT Labor government; and

(i) the ACT has the highest median childcare fees of any state or territory at $65 per day;

(ii) the ACT has the worst median waiting time for elective surgery at twice the national average, the lowest number of public dentists of any jurisdiction at 2 per 100,000 people, the lowest bulk billing rates in the country and the lowest number of public hospital beds per capita;

(iii) the inefficiency of the ACT public schooling system compared to other states and territories using a like-for-like analysis, as also revealed by the Commonwealth government’s My School website;

(iv) the lack of funding for non-government schools, which is the lowest in the country;

(v) the inefficient and bureaucratic public housing system which costs $36,672 per year for each dwelling—the highest in the country; and

(vi) the increasingly under-funded emergency services which have resulted in steadily increasing ambulance response times; and

(2) calls on the government to urgently and clearly articulate how it will address the issues raised in the report.

Mr Speaker, the real test of a government and its worth can be summed up in fairly simple terms, and that is this: has it made the lives of its constituents better or worse? Have things improved during the reign and the time of that government, or have they gone backwards? And when we talk about an ACT government charged with delivering territory functions as well as local functions, the more specific question might be: has the level of service delivery by that government got better, or has it got worse?

If people were to look at the last 8½ years and ask themselves that question, if Canberrans were to ask themselves that question in key areas, I think they would answer that, in many areas, they have got worse. That is what the debate today is about. That is what the Productivity Commission report has shown us. If Canberrans were to ask themselves whether it is easier or harder to get access to a GP in 2010 than it was in 2001, I think they would say it is harder. If they were waiting for elective surgery, would they be waiting longer? We know that they would. They would be waiting much longer for elective surgery.

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