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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4074 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

control the health bureaucracy was purchaser/provider. Take purchaser/provider away and what do we get? We get the ludicrous situation where record spending in health has actually led to reduced services. For example, waiting lists have blown out and must get worse. I would imagine that by the end of the holiday season there will be another 300 people on the waiting lists, perhaps more.

We have Calvary still with another three months of closures to go. Who knows how many weeks Canberra Hospital will close its wards? We have an extra $6 million that was spent as a crisis injection that was to give something like 2,800 cross-weighted separations but indeed only provided 300 extra cross-weighted separations and bought essential machinery. Never mind that we didn't have enough staff at that time-and still don't-to operate such machines. We still have radiotherapy patients forced to seek treatment interstate, some as far away as Adelaide and Brisbane. We have a 7 per cent reduction in psychiatric services at Calvary, despite the government's boasts. Despite the selective use of statistics by Mr Stanhope, mental health services are worse under him than they were under the previous government.

Another example is the emergency department at the Canberra Hospital, where waits of three and four hours are not uncommon and where staff play a macabre game of shuffleboard in order to get patients admitted. Another example is the closure of day care centres for the aged at the same time as we have a large budget allocation on older persons health.

The best example of how the bureaucracy can rocket out of control is the proposed addition of two new executives in the health department. These two executives will cost the territory at least $2 million in the term of their contracts. I do not doubt that the individuals recruited to these jobs will be highly skilled and qualified. What I do doubt is that the money could not be better spent somewhere else. According to the organisation chart presented at the recent health summit, these two fat cat positions do not have their own sections or divisions or groups or silos, or whatever the current parlance is. They float. The only thing that is clear from the chart was that they reported directly to the chief executive. Well, that's not good enough. They must have job descriptions, they must have performance targets, and they must be accountable.

Under purchaser/provider, they would have had job descriptions, they would have had performance targets and they would have been accountable. As a result, the Canberra community would know that they were getting value for their ratepayer dollar. Mr Stanhope will probably come back into the place and talk about the failings of the previous government. He'll possibly talk about Bruce, Hall, the Futsal slab or something like that, as he is wont to do. But I've got a message for him. Wake up. The community needs action. The community needs a leader who doesn't blame the Commonwealth or the previous government. The community needs Mr Stanhope to stop living in the past and do something about the crisis that is health under him.

The removal of the purchaser/provider system will make things worse. It will lead to increased bureaucracy. It will centralise services away from the town centres and make the North Building the equivalent of the forbidden city. We've already seen the sorts of problems we will get. There are already two million reasons why this is a bad idea. Waiting lists will get worse. The emergency department waiting times will get worse. Outcomes will get worse.

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