Page 1512 - Week 05 - Thursday, 7 May 2015
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MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Fitzharris for her supplementary. Let us be very clear: moving from an activity-based funding model to a population-based funding model has very serious consequences when it comes to our capacity to deliver health care for a growing and ageing population. It may sound like a bit of a technical argument but it has real-world implications. If you are only funding on the basis of population, you are not taking account of issues such as the older people get, the more healthcare treatment they need. And if you have a rapidly ageing population, even if the population growth is only modest, the cost to your health services goes up. Equally, if you have a lot of patients coming across the border to your hospitals, like we do here in the ACT, then population-based funding models do not properly account for that. Activity-based funding is a much more sensible way to try and address that issue. You are paid activity-based funding based on the amount of service you are delivering and the number of occasions of care you have to deliver, whereas if it is population based it does not take account of that.
So that is another hidden trap in Joe Hockey’s and Tony Abbott’s cuts to our hospital and healthcare funding arrangements, and they have real-world implications for Canberrans. We will continue to argue for the commonwealth to reverse their position, to honour their commitments when it comes to funding for health and hospital services, because we want to be able to sustain and grow our hospital system to meet the demands of our community. Right now, we have a federal government that has unilaterally walked away from signed agreements that delivered the funding we needed. (Time expired.)
MADAM SPEAKER: Before I call the next question, could I just remind members of the form and practice and also the rulings in the past: it is not acceptable for you in this place to refer to each other by your Christian names. I must refer to the Chief Minister not as Andrew Barr but as Mr Barr. The general ruling is that we should refer to other parliamentarians in the same terms, by their titles, not by their Christian names.
Kangaroos—cull
MR WALL: My question is to the Minister for the Environment. I refer to the announcement of a $530,000 trial of an injectable contraceptive as a potential measure to reduce the numbers of kangaroos in Canberra. Minister, how does the cost of this trial compare with the cost of culling kangaroos?
MR CORBELL: I do not have the immediate figures to hand, but it is the case that it is a cost that is potentially higher than the cost of lethal culling. The government has been very clear about that. At the moment we are not proposing to roll this out as an alternative to lethal culling. The government’s policy position is that lethal culling is, regrettably, the only methodology available to deal with the difficult issue of overpopulation of kangaroos in our nature reserves and national parks and the impact they have on endangered ecosystems.
But the purpose of the trial is to determine whether or not non-lethal means are viable. It would be, I think, generally supported by Canberrans that if we can in some way
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