Page 2900 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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The administration is not an issue that I put at the feet of the doctors and nurses. I put it at the feet of the succession of ministers opposite who have had responsibility for this area of government administration and who must be held to account for the lack of competence in running this territory. We look again at the number of emergency visits seen on time. Again, according to the AIHW—this is not Liberal Party economics or Liberal Party backroom number crunching; this is AIHW—in Canberra only 52 per cent of emergency visits were seen on time compared with nearly 70 per cent nationally. This is an indictment of this territory’s competence.
The lack of competence extends to many areas. Mr Corbell got up and spoke about a whole range of programs, but he very conveniently ignored things that have been raised, certainly in the financial area. I am glad to see that the Chief Minister is joining us. When I got here, the Chief Minister dismissed my suggestion to introduce GFS in terms of territory budgeting and I endured resistance and tirades from him. But after he got across the job, suddenly it was the greatest idea in the world and embraced that system of financial reporting.
He made fun of the fact that I met with Standard & Poor’s last year, but then he was acutely embarrassed when I read in this chamber and read to the people of Canberra in radio interviews the appalling report by Standard & Poor’s and the worrying signs that they identified in terms of this territory’s credit rating. They gave them a couple of courses of action. Essentially, they said that if the government continued on this course of action the territory’s credit rating would be at risk because of the financial pressure it was putting on the territory. Mr Stanhope’s solution was to tax the community with a raft of new tax measures. Of course, since that has happened and since we have seen extraordinary outcomes financially, we are now told that the money will not be handed back.
We have seen, in terms of competence or lack thereof, quite an incredible number of errors in terms of Treasury forecasting. Part of those forecasts is provided by the commonwealth in relation to GST but, in fact, many other areas are developed here at the local level. It continues to amaze me that we can be so inaccurate in our forecasting. We are so inaccurate that we passed a budget here in this place only a matter of weeks ago and already we are about to see a second appropriation. What kind of government is so out of touch with its own management that it suddenly has to go on a second spending spree when the ink is barely dry on its own budget?
But the key issue here in terms of territory management has been in the health area. My other colleagues hopefully will have an opportunity to talk about the way in which this city has been allowed to deteriorate. I have said before that I know that Mr Hargreaves has turned his attention to constituency matters, but I guess his hands are tied because of the poor way in which the territory’s funds have been allocated and the poor way in which our affairs generally have been managed by this territory government.
In the area of tourism Mr Barr trots out various statistics but, in fact, Canberra still does not rate on the international map of destinations. No matter how often he trots in here—no doubt in question time today or somewhere fairly soon he will quote his
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