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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 3318 ..

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, I bring them to task all the time for not referring to you and addressing your position. The reason the 21st is there is simply that it is the date at which the library itself starts to look for this information. If you go back and check last year's accession of the information, under the Labor government, January's figures were available in the library on 18 February; February's figures were available in the library on 19 March; March's figures were available on 23 April; April's slipped a bit-they were available by 30 May; June's figures were available by 29 July; July's figures were available on 19 August; August's figures were available by 23 September; and October's figures were available by 22 November.

It is a practice that has occurred and in most cases has been met. You have to understand that the data gets to the library and then its accession before it gets onto the shelf. I am not sure what the processing times are upstairs, but it is achievable and this government did it for the majority of last year. To say that the 21st is a figure that has been drawn out of a hat is not correct; it is the figure that most of us have worked to for some time.

Point 2 is plainly ridiculous. The defence is that it might identify somebody. Ms Tucker has stolen my thunder by saying that the new report is even more detailed in terms of being able to identify an individual patient. It is just ridiculous. Patient activity data sets contained this information for years, absolute years. This part of the amendment is designed to allow the government to peddle the fiction that the waiting times it publishes are somehow based on reality.

I get letters every week telling me that there are very few people who are waiting 136 days for category 2 surgery. It is a deceitful attempt to hide the truth about the specialists and the speciality operations that are required. Who knows? Perhaps we will discover that the CountryLink excuse does not apply just to radio oncology but also to orthopaedics; to ear, nose and throat; to ophthalmology; and to neurosurgery. If we get that excuse too often, the government might worry that people will no longer believe it.

Point 3 says that information will be amended to include all the information on the ACT Health website. That is laudable, except for one insy winsy little point. Why on earth has the website been inoperable since February and, now that we have brought that to the attention of the minister, why is it going to take until September to fix it? I remind members that the government's own health action plan said that information would be available on the website.

Point 4 notes that the waiting list information prepared by the Stanhope government provides more information and is more accurate than the previous reports, due to auditing practices introduced by the government. The previous government did audit the lists and remove double counting-so there is no additional auditing. They might be doing a different sort of auditing now, but auditing was done on the previous list to ensure accuracy. You cannot say it will take more time because there is auditing, since auditing was done last time.

Mrs Cross: Did you keep the webpage updated?

MR SMYTH: I am not sure we had a webpage. It is quite clear that this part of the motion is just plain wrong. We got the contradiction from Mr Corbell himself. He sends me a letter saying, "The information that I gave you was incorrect. We are not proposing

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