Page 3650 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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enormously destructive of schools. If there is no policy on training, perhaps they will just leave it alone, and that might be the better way to go. As for the Government, Mr Berry, we will continue. We will carry on with our reforms in the interest of improving what happens in the ACT and what is happening nationally, especially for those people who are working in business and industry.
Health Expenditure
MR HUMPHRIES: My question is directed also to the Minister for Health. The Minister has referred to this $30m being ripped out of the public hospital system. I would like to ask him about this matter. He has attacked the Leader of the Opposition over her proposals to save approximately $26m in public hospital expenditure over a three-year period, and $4m separately in the Department of Health, through a range of carefully costed initiatives to return the focus in health to the patient.
Mr Lamont: It must have hurt.
MR HUMPHRIES: Something is going to hurt, Minister; I am not sure what it is going to be, though. On the same day that he released the Andersen Consulting report into ACT Health in April, the Minister promised that the Follett Government was fully committed to implementing all the report's recommendations. I am sure that the Minister recalls that. Noting, therefore, that on page 5 of the report it recommends that there be performance improvements in the order of $25m over a three-year period, will the Minister now apologise to Mrs Carnell, who has simply been up-front about implementation of his Andersen Consulting report in contrast to his own position, which has been to attack the Carnell Opposition for merely doing what he does not have the guts to admit - that he is going to do it too?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, I am glad that Mr Humphries has stood and admitted that the Liberal Party are committed to reducing expenditure on health by $30m. That is, they want to spend $30m less on health. They seem to agree; that is what they want to do.
Mr Humphries: But you are too.
MR CONNOLLY: No, I am not. If you listen you will learn, if possible. What we want to do, what we are committed to doing, and what has been the hallmark of this administration in a whole range of areas, is to drive efficiencies in government; to deliver services more efficiently in order to reap that efficiency dividend in order to provide more services. We know, as anybody with any sense and in-depth knowledge of the health system knows, that over coming years health costs are going to continue to rise, and in some areas alarmingly and unpredictably.
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