Page 3066 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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know that it has to be there. We took that decision. We put it there. What did your party and your leader, Mr Stanhope, call it? They called it a slush fund. They wanted details of how it was all going to be spent, broken down into the dollars, into the components. We were asked to tell them where it is all going because it was a slush fund.
We have taken a very mature approach to the health debate in this place, because we understand that it has to grow. We have never questioned the need for growth funds in health because we do know that they have to be there, not like the immature approach of your predecessors. It is good to see that you continue our initiative to put that growth funding there, because we know that it needs to be there.
The unfortunate thing is the unfunded gap. That unfunded gap will be your downfall because you do not have a strategy to manage the hospitals properly. My prediction is that the national health reforms will not bear much fruit for the ordinary folk who deserve elective surgery. In fact we will be reviewing these reforms, I suspect, very, very quickly. They are not designed—in fact, they were not designed; they were just cobbled together and then immediately fell apart, which is what happens when things are cobbled together in this way.
But you have to have a real commitment to ensuring that the hospital is allowed to function properly, which it is not. It is beset by problems. This is highlighted by the minister’s own statement that there has been a 10-year war in obstetrics. This is the thing that we need to look at. I will take a break now, Mr Assistant Speaker. I might come back to this in a while. (Time expired.)
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I wish you well, Mr Smyth.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.57): (Second speaking period taken.) We heard before from Ms Gallagher that she really was open about the 50-odd per cent of GST that the ACT Labor government had agreed to give up. We had the speculation before the meeting “well, it could possibly be in the order of 40 per cent” but then nothing. When they signed the agreement and they signed up to over 50 per cent, there was nothing. There was nothing in the press release. It was reported in the Canberra Times as one-third. They did not correct that. It is funny that the ads did not come. Normally when they think the Canberra Times has got it wrong, they send out the government advertising to fix it. We saw that with the LDA. The Chief Minister got out of bed on the wrong side, saw an article that was critical of one of his programs and suddenly, wham, thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money was spent just to tell us how good those programs were.
We did not see a press release correcting it; we did not see a press release at all. We did not see one statement saying that what they had signed up to was actually 50 per cent, when everyone else had signed up for around 30 per cent. Embarrassed by this revelation, the minister’s defence was: “Actually, it’s not being withheld. We’re not giving it up. There’s no change here. There’s nothing to see here.” What was all that negotiation about? Why was there that negotiation if they did not actually have to give anything up, if it was not withheld?
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