Page 1787 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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Madam Speaker, as we have said before, we are rolling up our sleeves and getting on with the job. We have a problem as a community. It is pointless to play silly partisan politics with this issue. If Mr Moore changed his mind tomorrow - I am not trying to encourage him to do so - and you found yourself in government, you would face exactly the same problem. There is no simple magic wand here. Arthur Andersen say that it will take three years to turn around what has been a long-term malaise in terms of a lack of a financial imperative in the culture of ACT Health. We have the first recommendation already in place. I look forward to continually reporting to this place - I am sure that I will be asked - on how we are going in setting that in place. There is no simple answer.
Casemix, Madam Speaker, is not a magic wand. There are increasingly agitated calls for casemix. We tend to get from the Opposition the impression that if only we followed Mrs Tehan all would be well. There is significant debate in Victoria, not just from the Labor Party. You might assume that the Labor Party would be critical of anything the Liberal Government does, just as you seem to be critical of anything we do; but there is considerable debate within health administration professionals, within the medical profession and within reputable consumer organisations about just how effective casemix is, and certainly about some of the reclassifications that seem to have occurred in order to achieve the quite miraculous reductions in waiting lists that have been published by the Victorian Government. That is not to say that casemix is not a tool that we will be looking at. As I said at the outset, our casemix expert is working with our resource management committee, so we are seeing that as one of the tools that we will use to go about this process of improvement.
We are sitting down and talking to all the health unions. We are sitting down and talking with the AMA, as you would have read in Canberra Doctor - which probably spoiled your lunch if it arrived in the morning. We are setting the parameters for improvement in the system. It will take some time. There will, I am sure, be plenty of figures that do not look real flash coming out in future quarterly reports for the Opposition to politic about; but this Government is determined to get on with the job of ACT Health financial improvement, while continuing to provide to the people of this city and this region an absolutely first-rate public health system. There has been from the Opposition a litany of attack on Mr Berry for doing nothing to improve the public hospital system. The clinical school, which will be opening up next year, will be one of the most significant single changes in the delivery of health services in this community. It is something that I know the Opposition supports, and it is something that I know Mr Humphries had a great interest in when he was Minister. That decision was implemented by Mr Berry and it delivers to Canberra a full public teaching hospital quality of service.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.13): Mr Berry - I am sorry; I mean Mr Connolly. I still confuse the two to some extent. Mr Connolly has issued a plea for us to be more accommodating with the problems that he is facing. He seems to be saying that we are a tough lot here; the problems with Health are pretty deeply entrenched and we have so many problems to face that we have to really work through this, and so on. I am sure that all of us can accept, to a certain extent, the need for citizens of the Territory, and in particular politicians, to be working cooperatively towards resolving some of these longstanding problems; but there is a real question about just how long any government in the Territory needs to have to grapple with these problems.
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