Page 2888 - Week 13 - Thursday, 23 November 1989
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However, given the background to the approach we are taking to this budget and given the desire we have not to allow anybody else but this Government to bear the blame for this budget, we believe that that would not be an appropriate amendment, although naturally if the Government chose to do it itself we would be more than happy to support it.
The fact is that nowhere is the failure of this Government more apparent than in the area of health and, in particular, hospitals. Over the last few months we have seen a constant succession of failures by this Government, a constant succession of missed opportunities, of failure, of indecision to act, of inattention to detail, which add up unfortunately to a disaster in our hospitals and our health system generally. I readily concede that this Government inherited a hospital system which was not in good shape. It ought to have been able, I think, to have addressed some of the more fundamental problems quickly. Unfortunately, more than six months after self-government has arrived, we still have seen no decisive action in respect of those problems. Quite frankly, that is an unacceptably lackadaisical attitude for any government.
Moreover, we have seen the crisis blow up, in particular in respect of the hospitals problem. This budget, as allocated to the hospitals budget, will not cover the expenditure to be incurred in the hospital system if the Government is not able to decisively address problems of overexpenditure and cost blow-outs identified recently by the interim hospitals board. Now, I am still unclear as to whether or not any decisive action is going to happen in that area. Certainly we heard a more than clear cry for help from the hospital board. That cry was for political help in dealing with these problems, and frankly this Government was just not prepared to come to the party.
That board now founders in indecision and uncertainty, an indecision and uncertainty which is not helping our hospital system one iota. The fact is that there are significant areas where this Government could reduce expenditure, and it is not prepared to look at those problems at this stage. One, of course, is food services. A grossly inefficient food service system is used in our hospitals. Another problem is cleaning services and their unwillingness, from a not illogical point of view, to consider the advantages of privatisation there. And, of course, there is the classic question of cost of shift overlaps within the nursing profession and elsewhere.
It adds up to a litany of failure, and I do not believe that the community of the ACT should long tolerate this kind of failure. The fact is that this is the Government's bed, it will have to lie down in it and it will have to bear the price of having this kind of record of failure.
Division agreed to.
Division 170.2, $6,926,000, agreed to.
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