Page 982 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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will allow the ACT to access more federal funding and should assist in achieving some efficiencies in our public hospitals. Whether this is real reform is probably a debate for another time. However, this is an opportunity for the federal government to take more responsibility for funding public hospitals and that is something which should be taken advantage of.
The COAG health package was designed not only to provide more funding to public hospitals and have them become more efficient but also to produce improved safety and quality outcomes for patients. I understand that there is still consultation being undertaken through COAG about what the set of national standards will look like and the degree to which they are voluntary. This will put more pressure on the ACT government to improve indicators in areas such as emergency department and elective surgery waiting times. But I stress here the importance of the ACT government maintaining any standards that it has set itself which are above the national standards.
In responding to this bill the Greens have also considered the national political context. We do not want to enact a scheme that becomes redundant in six months time. When the Greens were briefed by the department we were advised that the local hospital network council was a fairly non-contentious aspect of the COAG discussions and that all jurisdictions will have their networks in place by 1 July this year.
The ACT’s local hospital network council will be advisory in nature. All it can really do is make recommendations to the Minister for Health and the department about how they spend funds allocated to the hospitals. The Northern Territory is taking the same approach as the ACT, which seems to be reasonable as both territories are small jurisdictions.
There is every chance that this council will duplicate some of the jobs that have been performed by existing committees run through ACT Health and some changes will need to occur in this context. But this is a step that the government is willing to take in order to receive extra federal funding, a move which is understandable, and any subsequent rearrangements of committees can be worked through. We would like to make it clear, however, that the ministerial advisory council on health should remain. If its function does change at all it should be directed towards looking at the bigger picture of population and health.
One issue in the original bill is that it was not clear that reports made by the council would be public. Given the council’s advisory role, this seems to be an important tool to make available to the council. If, for example, major recommendations are being made by the council to the minister and they are not being acted on, this will be picked up through public reporting and can be pursued by another organisation.
The issue of public reporting did seem to be an oversight in the first draft of the bill. I notice that the minister is moving amendments on that. I appreciate that that has been taken into account and that that suggestion put forward by my office was taken account of. We do see public reporting as being important.
In regard to the budget of the council, the ACT government has allocated $180,000 per annum for the running of the advisory council. This money covers reimbursement
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