Page 1600 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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showed that Canberra’s public hospitals cost $61 million more than the Australian average on a casemix adjusted separation basis.
Despite this extra cost, Canberrans face the longest waiting times in Australia for elective surgery, with the median waiting time for elective surgery in 2006-07 being 61 days, compared to a median of 32 days Australia-wide. More than 10 per cent of Canberrans waited for longer than a year for elective surgery, compared to four per cent Australia-wide. The fact of the matter is that that is code for a lot of pain and suffering for lots of people. Yes, I know that people who need hip replacements and related orthopaedic problems may not be in a life and death situation, but the fact that they have to suffer from this pain for extended periods because this government has failed to manage the health system on an efficient basis is cause for deep and grave concern. The situation for emergency treatment is just as bad. Only half of the patients in ACT emergency rooms received timely treatment. As I said last night, time and time again we hear anecdotal evidence of people, apart from the statistical evidence showing that there is dissatisfaction in the community about the managing of health.
We saw in the Auditor-General’s report of 2006 on vocational education and training that the ACT government spent 13 per cent more per annual hour of curriculum than the national average. Despite this higher spending, student and employer satisfaction rates with VET programs were below the national average. There are other more specific examples of government waste. We have seen money wasted on costly and politically motivated legal challenges to the coronial inquiry into the bushfires, hardly in the interests of the ACT taxpayer, and a futile, wasteful High Court challenge against the Australian government over reforms to industrial relations that were delivering benefits to all of the Australian people. These were little more than expensive political statements masquerading as law suits.
We have also seen, of course, the wasteful pet projects and political indulgences such as the arboretum, the Al Grassby statue and Mr Corbell’s famous but now defunct Belconnen to city busway proposal. So far the government has survived, despite its reckless spending, on the back of a strong Australian economy and record revenues and investment in this territory by the Australian government. Despite this great opportunity, the ACT government has shown an inability to properly plan ahead and respond to critical situations.
We have seen the government's planning failures on show in the ACT water crisis. While the Liberal Party has been pushing for a new water supply for the ACT, a catchment storage area, since 2004, the government has only recently noticed this issue. This has led to long delays in the expansion of Canberra’s water supply which have now put us in a precarious position. It has also led to a greater need for water restrictions, with consequent impositions on Canberra business.
Poor planning contributed also to the traffic problems at the intersection of Pialligo and Majura avenues and on the GDE, the former being areas that are only now being addressed. Of course, the piece de resistance of this government’s inability to properly plan ahead and to respond to critical situations was the legendary response of this territory to the 2003 firestorm. This government knew of an impending disaster to the
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