Page 952 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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I would be delighted to give the minister leave to speak again, to jump up here and say that, yes, she has got confidence that the report stands analysis and assessment by the community at large, particularly health professionals, and that she is quite happy by the end of business today to table those reports in the ACT Assembly.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (4.11): I need to respond to some of the outrageous assertions and the rewriting of history that were included in the self-aggrandising comments of the member.
Never forget—and the people of Canberra will never forget—what we inherited from the previous Liberal government in relation to health in the territory when we came to government. We inherited a circumstance in the first instance in which the previous government, just before the election, had made a 14 per cent pay offer to nurses which it did not carry through on. That led to a dispute which we had to settle.
Do you know what we discovered, on coming to government in relation to this much-vaunted sort of economic management credential that the Liberal Party flaunt? It was a one per cent provision. We hear Mr Smyth today rabbiting on about management within the health portfolio and the hospital. But just imagine coming into government having observed, from the opposition bench, a government making pay offers of 14 per cent with a one per cent provision.
What else did we discover on coming to government? We discovered the lowest level of per capita expenditure on mental health in Australia. If there are a number of aspects of the previous government’s stewardship, the Liberal Party stewardship, of the Australian Capital Territory and of health particularly, they are in the areas of mental health and disability services. Can you just appreciate now from this distance that we have had to increase expenditure on mental health by somewhere approaching—
Ms Gallagher: Ninety-two per cent.
MR STANHOPE: a doubling—a 92 per cent increase in mental health expenditure since coming to government—just to catch up with the rest of Australia. And here we have the shadow minister jumping up today, beating his breast, claiming some credential and some capacity, to dare to criticise this government on mental health. We have increased expenditure on mental health since coming to government by 92 per cent to undo the damage and the neglect of the previous government in relation to mental health.
As for disability services, I mentioned just the other day the Gallop report—something else we inherited from Mr Smyth. We inherited the Gallop report, an inquiry into disability services in the territory. We know what Gallop found in relation to the previous government’s stewardship of disability services provision in the territory. We know why the Gallop inquiry was initiated and commissioned. And we also know, if we follow issues of disability services, that since coming to government we have increased expenditure on disability services by 69 per cent as a result of the
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