Page 3284 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 13 November 2007
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period catered for the four per cent decrease by increasing by five percentage points from 46 per cent to 51 per cent. They have done this through failure to fully index the Australian health care agreement. This costs states and territories $1.1 billion per annum and costs the ACT at least $14 million per annum, without costing the additional funding we are owed due to the higher than average utilisation rates of our public hospitals.
So what does that mean for us? It means we have been short changed. What would $14 million do for the people of the ACT? It would provide an extra 3,200 cost-weighted separations to be provided in our hospitals. The extra $14 million each year would slash our elective surgery waiting list by 67 per cent in one year, allowing for an increase of approximately 35 per cent in elective surgery throughput.
So where is this money going? Over the same period, the commonwealth has approved a 38 per cent increase in private health insurance premiums based on hospital costs, whereas comparable indexation increases provided to the public sector are approximately 20 per cent. So the real issue is ensuring the commonwealth government funds its part of the deal for public hospitals. Despite the federal government abrogating its responsibilities to public hospitals, we have made up as much of the gap as we possibly can, Mr Speaker.
Since coming to office in 2001, the Stanhope government has increased spending in the health area by 70 per cent in just over seven years—70 per cent. That funding has not just met the increasing costs of health care; the increased funding for health and our public hospitals has also funded new ways to provide care that provides the people of the ACT with a better range of options to better meet their needs.
Mr Speaker, I have much more that I could say, but time is going to get the better of me as well. I will just say that since 2002-03, approximately $134 million has been committed by this government to deliver budget initiatives which directly impact on our emergency departments and provide greater access to inpatient beds. They are just some of the examples of the way that this government is working to ensure that the people of Canberra have access to the best possible health system that they can. There is no way that the cries of the opposition in regards to the hospital system and the health system in the ACT being inadequate are correct. They are not.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (4.41): Mr Speaker, just in relation to a couple of points that Ms MacDonald raised, unfortunately, I think she is a bit off with the fairies. One thing just springs to mind—they talk about getting doctors into the ACT. Recently, a South African doctor, who appeared qualified, was going to be working in a Charnwood surgery. I note that it was a great initiative by people in the region, but it has actually closed through a lack of medical staff after a lot of effort by a number of people to get it up, including, actually, Ms Porter. We know he was told he would be ticked off by a board, or at least go before a board, within six weeks. It turned out that that was at least six months. Now that is not a federal responsibility; that is an ACT government responsibility.
The sad fact of the matter is that for many years in Canberra we had some basic figures, and any of us who had been through the hospital system would know this.
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