Page 3293 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 November 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
As I explained to the Estimates Committee, it is almost always very difficult to judge the position across Australia and to draw comparisons about how the various hospital systems are performing. In the ACT, people have ready access to that sort of information in our hospital system. I have to say that that is not the case in all other States, and it is very difficult for us to make comparisons with the performances of those other States in relation to waiting lists. Waiting lists are not the only performance indicator. They represent predominantly an area of elective surgery, which will always have a waiting list but which we would prefer to be much lower.
The ACT Labor Government fully supports Medicare and will not be involved in a process of forcing people into expensive private hospital beds. That is the very reason why the two Liberal States walked out of the arrangements to sign the Medicare agreement; they distanced themselves completely. They wanted a commitment from all to a bigger involvement of the private hospital sector in the system. What they were looking for, I suggest, was a commitment to subsidise the private hospital system to provide services to the community. We are not in that business. We are not in the business of providing wealth to private health insurers or to private hospitals. They are out there in the market and they can compete for that share of the market which chooses not to use our public hospital system. This Government is keen to ensure that our public hospital system works well.
At this point it is clear that the States are poles apart on Medicare, as Victoria and New South Wales are not prepared to sign this agreement. This has the effect of not giving those States access during the financial year to additional funding from the Commonwealth for reducing waiting lists. We look forward to participating in the further development of health goals and targets linked to health outcomes during the course of the new Medicare agreement.
WORKERS' COMPENSATION SUPPLEMENTATION FUND
(AMENDMENT) BILL 1992
Debate resumed from 22 October 1992, on motion by Mr Berry:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR DE DOMENICO (4.10): Mr Deputy Speaker, save the amendment that has been circulated in my name, the Liberal Party will not be opposing the Bill. As the Minister, Mr Berry, quite rightly said, the Workers' Compensation Supplementation Fund Act established a system under which workers' rights to compensation would be protected in the case of an insurance company going into liquidation. Whilst this sort of situation does not happen very often, thank the Lord, it does happen from time to time and, purely and simply, this fund is there to protect people.
We know that the fund is currently looking at claims from Palmdale/AGCI, which are nearly run out, Bishopsgate Insurance and National Employers Mutual in 1990. As Mr Berry also correctly said, the money to pay the claims is raised by surcharge on workers compensation policies, which means that the employers in the ACT are all charged a premium on top of the insurance premium to pay for the fund. Up until 1986 workers compensation policies in the ACT tabulated
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .