Page 3064 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Mr Hanson: You have got to tell people somewhere.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Hanson!
MR SMYTH: where it says that greater than 50 per cent was being retained. I think this is the thing of concern. It is the way this minister does business. It is the way this government does business. It is, indeed, perhaps even the way the federal government did business until the departure of Mr Rudd. It will be interesting to see how the new Prime Minister does.
The problem is that this is not a plan. Health is too important to be treated as some sort of meeting and showplace where you can say a few things that then evolve. If you are going to have serious health reform of this nature, what you have to have is a very clear, very concise plan that actually works. What you cannot have is bits falling off almost immediately the plan comes under any scrutiny. That is the problem with what this minister has signed up to.
You have got to give her some credit. She at least was willing to roll up her sleeves and do some work while the Chief Minister went off to the bar, because he thought he had cut a deal. He broke early. He thought he got a good deal for the people of the ACT. He just surrendered more than 50 per cent of the GST. He did not get a single concession—not a single concession—and this is still the same.
Mr Seselja: Once again, this is not New South Wales we are talking about.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, Mr Smyth does not need your help. He doesn’t need it.
Mr Seselja: I am helping him.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: He does not need you.
MR SMYTH: No, he is. I find him of great assistance. He reminds me of things that I should say. It is great to have the Leader of the Opposition—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Well, I feel sorry for both of you.
MR SMYTH: I am very, very, very grateful. The problem is if you cast back to when Mr Stanhope was the health minister, Mr Stanhope in 2001 was going to fix the health system. He was going to fix the hospital system by a crisis injection of $6 million. It was a crisis. It was a crisis then when the elective surgery waiting lists were 3,488. What is it now when the elective surgery waiting list, as at 22 June, is 5,484? If it was a crisis at 3,488, what is it now—an absolute catastrophe at 5,484?
Of course, the $6 million crisis injection did not work because the government did not have a plan. They did have a review that took away the model that was actually working. The model in place in 2001 that was steadily reducing elective surgery waiting lists was to have a local board and a purchaser-provider arrangement between the government department of health and the hospital board.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video