Page 2647 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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implement the decision that the Government has made and announced in this matter?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mr Kaine for the question. There are two aspects of Mr Kaine's question. The first, which has been debated over and over in this Assembly, is the fact that the ACT Government has inherited a run-down hospital system in the ACT, and it has to be fixed. In view of that fact, I have included in our approach to the Federal Government in a financial agreement between our two governments an amount that I consider is required from the Federal Government to make up for its previous neglect of our health system. Mr Kaine is not correct in saying that it appears we will not get it. There is no such indication. I have not had a response. So I think he is getting a bit premature in making that somewhat gloomy assumption. I have not had a response on that matter.
Mr Kaine: I am familiar with the attitudes of governments to expenditures of $150m.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MS FOLLETT: Well, that may be, but we can talk about this later. Mr Speaker might get a bit annoyed. That is as may be, Mr Speaker. The fact is that I have not had a response from the Commonwealth on it. So to say we are not getting any of it is premature at this stage. But we have indeed put in a bid to the Federal Government. Mr Kaine is correct in saying we expect that the restructuring of the hospital system will cost, on current indications, some $210m and that the Government plans to undertake that restructuring over a number of years - up to seven years, in fact. So I would think that even Mr Kaine's mathematics could cope with the fact that that averages out at about $30m a year. That $30m a year is a very large proportion indeed of the Government's capital works budget.
Members will know that the capital works budget this year was about $110m, I believe, so the $30m each year that would be required to meet that restructuring is a huge proportion of that capital works budget. But that is where the money will have to come from - from the normal government expenditure on capital works. It will be a matter for prioritising within our capital works program which the Assembly considered this year, and there is no great mystery to it. We have put in a bid to the Commonwealth to make up for the run-down condition of the system that we took over. We also have our own capital works program, but to fund it entirely from our own capital works program, as has been pointed out, and I totally agree with it, is an enormous imposition on that capital works program. It will be up to the Government to decide between priorities how we proceed.
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