Page 351 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 February 2013

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approved entities and making payments to the racing clubs of fees collected will remain in place as long as necessary to wrap up all activity relating to the current financial year.

The approval of entities and the setting and notification of fees and relevant thresholds will become the responsibility of the controlling bodies from the date of commencement of the amendments, proposed to be 1 March this year, with the commission staff assisting in the handover. The bill also provides that additional regulations may be made to support the transition where required.

I am confident that these changes will help support the racing industry now and into the future by giving the controlling bodies the flexibility to maintain a race field information charge scheme that is relevant to local conditions. I thank the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, in their scrutiny role, for the review of the Racing Amendment Bill. The committee raised no comments on this bill. I commend the bill to the Assembly.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Health (National Health Funding Pool and Administration) Bill 2012 (No 2)

Debate resumed from 27 November 2012, on motion by Ms Gallagher:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.21): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill today as we believe it is important to secure as much health funding for the residents of the ACT as possible. This bill establishes the national health funding pool, the administrator of that pool and a territory-managed fund for receiving funding of public hospital services. This bill is necessary to ensure that the ACT receives funding from the federal government under health reforms.

I note that this is not an efficient manner of receiving this funding and the national agreement that the Chief Minister has signed up to today does add another level of bureaucracy to the Health Directorate. The Canberra Liberals supported the establishment of a local hospital network in March 2011, acknowledging then that this was an unnecessary level of bureaucracy, a point that at the time senior Health Directorate staff supported.

This bill will hopefully facilitate residents in the ACT receiving much-needed funding for our health system. The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill today.


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