Page 5509 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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Mr Smyth: Captain underpants—exactly—all front.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth!
MS GALLAGHER: You guys are pathetic.
Mr Stanhope: Childish, very childish.
Mr Hanson: You started it.
Mr Hargreaves: All class, Jeremy.
Mr Hanson: He starts with “jellyback” and then tries to get on the moral high ground.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, Mr Hargreaves, will you please stop engaging with them. Mr Hanson and Mr Smyth, I will review the Hansard at a later stage of the day, or Mr Speaker will, and we will look at that particular interjection, if in fact it was made. I did not hear it; therefore I cannot make a ruling on it.
MS GALLAGHER Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In relation to the motion which talks about the GST funding around health, as we have been discussing in this place for a number of months, that money is not being removed from the ACT. That money is coming to ACT Health for the sole purposes of health care and this government does not have a problem with that. We believe that the $400-odd million coming from the GST to be allocated to health is a good use of that money and will go into health. Where we do not provide for that through our budget statements at the moment, those funds will be reallocated to other important areas of government service delivery.
The other important thing here under the deal we signed with the commonwealth is that we are already receiving increased financial assistance from the commonwealth for our health service. For example, 22 subacute beds are currently being delivered to the ACT health system under that deal. Is the opposition saying that that is a bad outcome for the ACT—that we should not have signed up to national health reform and therefore we would not have got the $80-odd million in additional resources coming to the ACT? We reject that. We think it was a good deal. That money is already flowing and those services will be operational and, indeed, under elective surgery those services, through that additional money, are operational now.
Then the motion condemns the government. I am just trying to go to Mr Smyth’s point here that it is a harmless motion that calls for a simple piece of work, a simple motion for those—
Mr Smyth: I didn’t say it was harmless. Where did I say “harmless”?
MS GALLAGHER: Madam Deputy Speaker, this is what he was trying to allege—that this is a very straightforward motion that has to be supported by everybody. My point is that the Liberals deliberately write these motions so that they go down. And
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