Page 1763 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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Health Budget
MR KAINE: I direct a question to the Treasurer. In answers to earlier questions on health matters, Mr Connolly has waved the Andersen report as though he had somehow pulled a rabbit out of a hat in solving the problems of the health organisation. Treasurer, I note that this report highlights the fact that in 1990 and 1991 the Alliance Government, having discovered that things were out of control in Health, commissioned a series of studies to find out what the problem was and to come forward with solutions. This report mentions them all up front and it mentions the action that was to follow. Yet this report also notes that little progress towards reducing costs has been achieved three years downstream and that there is a lack of commitment to, and emphasis on, achieving financial results three years after those inquiries were done and the recommendations were put on the table. Chief Minister, your Health Minister seems to have had little regard for this and has certainly given no direction from the top as to what should happen. I suggest that your new Minister is going to be no better. I ask you, Chief Minister: As Treasurer of this Territory, having observed the blow-out in the health budget through all those years, and having all these reports on the table, what did you do, as Treasurer, to make sure that, first of all, savings were effected and, secondly, there was a culture of commitment to, and emphasis on, achieving financial results?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, in answering Mr Kaine's question, I would like to refer to the Andersen report, which shows that by far the worst overrun in Health occurred in 1990-91. Madam Speaker, members might recall that that was continually denied by Mr Kaine, the then Treasurer, and Mr Humphries, the then Minister for Health. They purported month after month to know nothing about this, and they behaved very surprised when it was eventually proven, even to them, that the health budget under their control, so called, was completely out of kilter.
Madam Speaker, I acknowledge that, as Mr Kaine has said, when in government Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries commissioned a number of reports. One of those reports, of course, led to the termination of the then chief executive officer of Health. In other words, the main focus of the Alliance's activity was to find a scapegoat, whom they then got rid of. As we have seen, it had no effect whatsoever on the ability to control the health budget. So even your scapegoating activities were completely ineffectual.
Madam Speaker, as my colleague Mr Connolly has said, this Government commissioned the Andersen report. I regard it as a very valuable report. As I say, the Government has a commitment to implementing this report. I make no bones about the fact that the health budget has been difficult to control. Had Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries been a little less defensive when they were in government, they would have admitted that as well; but, of course, what they did was bury their heads in the sand and make no admissions whatsoever until their health budget blew out by some $17m - about twice the size of the problem we are facing this year.
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