Page 2689 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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I add also that further consideration must be given to monitoring and responding rapidly to any identified mental illness of young people who are either in contact with the justice system or are placed under the responsibility of the justice system and are serving a custodial sentence in the juvenile custodial system. I have felt it imperative, therefore, to offer such subjective input about mental illness during the deliberation on the appropriation bill, as it is often overlooked and given less consideration in the broader context of the budgetary process. With all the recent spotlight and media focus on mental health issues, and certainly those surrounding depression, I am sure that any future government in this jurisdiction, or any other for that matter, will certainly be placing far greater emphasis on and looking far more closely at budget allocation funding in the future.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Health, Minister for Disability and Community Services and Minister for Women) (6.10): We have got to me a bit earlier than I thought. I thank members for their comments on the health budget. It is a significant appropriation, over $600 million. With other payments this year, the health budget will exceed three-quarters of a billion dollars for the first time. It is a significant amount of money and is worthy of all of our attention on how that is being spent.
This budget is about targeting pressure areas in health and emergency department waiting times and focusing on things such as access block and cancellation of elective surgery—all areas which put pressures on our hospital system. We have responded in this budget with additional acute care beds, additional critical care beds, additional money for mental health, additional money for elective surgery and, importantly, $30 million for cancer services, of which around $18 million is for the linear accelerator. There are extra staff for oncologists. There is a focus in this budget on early intervention and prevention—and I will go to some of Dr Foskey’s comments on that—and, importantly, measures to address work force recruitment and retention areas.
This budget is important in the sense that, for the first time, the health budget’s growth is being funded at an appropriate level. It is recognised that over the next four years the government will provide an additional $200 million, recognising that, because of the forecast growth, it was underfunded. Everyone across the country knows the rate at which health costs are growing. This budget has recognised that. I am hopeful that that recognition—the fact that we have funded growth on average at 6.4 per cent across the four years—will prove us to be an attractive place for a new chief executive. They have certainty over their funding. More money is provided for growth, as I said, than any other jurisdiction is currently funding it at. That requires us to bring down some of our costs.
Mr Smyth quoted 13 per cent growth in his figures. I would like to see his figures, because my figures show me just under 10 per cent for the actual outcome each year. But this budget has recognised that, whilst we need to provide growth at around 6.4 per cent, our health budget has been growing at around 10 per cent. This budget is being funded at 8.9 per cent growth, but that will mean that we have to bring down our costs. We need to lower our unit costs to within 10 per cent of national peer group hospitals over the next five years. That is looking at savings of about two per cent on average a year.
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