Thousands of Territory hospital workers are angry and fear for their futures. You have moved a vote of ‘no confidence’ in them. You are threatening their jobs and conditions. Is it not true that even the consultants’ report, which you have swallowed hook, line and sinker, says that these workers met national efficiency standards? When will you tell these hospital workers what they have done to deserve these unprecedented attacks?

ANSWER

Madam Speaker, it is good to hear at last, some comment from the shadow member for health, because he has been stymied throughout this process by the Leader of the Opposition who has been running all sorts of ...

Ms MARTIN: A point of order! The answer should be relevant to the question. This has nothing to do with it and I ask the minister to answer this very important question.

Madam SPEAKER: Minister, would you make your answer relevant to the question.

Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, the shadow spokesman for health has been stymied right from the start by the Leader of the Opposition, who, for the interest of Territorians, has never sought briefings on this issue ...

Members: interjecting.

Madam SPEAKER: Order! Minister, please stop for a moment. The minister does not have a loud voice and I am sure people listening to this broadcast would like to hear his answer. If you keep interjecting, you make it very difficult for the member for Arnhem or anyone to hear.

Mr BURKE: I might add, Madam Speaker, that I will be here for some time with this answer if the Leader of the Opposition and others keep interjecting.

The reason it is relevant is that without seeking a briefing from me or any other member of Territory Health Services involved in the very complex process, and the very complex issues that we are investigating throughout the whole health system but, in particular, in this instance in hospitals, the Leader of the Opposition has put out this circular entitled ‘10 good reasons to keep Territory hospitals in our hands’. It should be called ‘10 good reasons to promote fear and uncertainty in the community’.

I will table this ‘10 good reasons’ statement for the benefit of honourable members. The reason we are going through this process is probably the first question that has to be asked and it is important for Territorians to understand exactly what is involved. This is something that has been concerning me for some time. I have often mentioned in statements to the House the rising cost of health care in the Northern Territory…

Mrs Hickey: You didn’t tell Territorians before the last election.

Mr BURKE: The simple answer to that - did I tell Territorians before the last election - is that I did from the day I became health minister, in statements to this House, talk about the problems that we have with health, not only in the Northern Territory but particularly right throughout Australia. We have been going through what could be called an integrative process in discovering why.

The Northern Territory government, when it comes to health care and the amount of money we spend, can stand proudly on its record. We spend something like $3000 per person on health care in the Northern Territory, compared to a jurisdiction like Victoria which spends $2269 per person. In hospitals alone, we spend $900 per person compared to a state like Western Australia, with similar difficulties with delivering of services to remote communities, and Western Australia spends $574 per person.

The health budget for the Northern Territory in 1994-95 was $293m. The health budget in 1998-99 is $400m. Any responsible health minister and any responsible government would look at those costs and start questioning why those costs are rising and whether the money is being allocated and processed exactly the way it should be. I am looking at those issues. I intend to promote the process we are going through far and wide, because its the responsible thing to do and the outcome will be the best outcome for Territorians.

I’ve never said we do not have problems in health care. The issue has been finding out precisely where those problems are. The first problem is that we have a functional problem in the Northern Territory in the way that health care is delivered. The reality is that, nowadays, health care is delivered to Australians and Territorians far differently from the way it was done 15 to 20 years ago. The amount of technology that has come into health care is one of the major cost drivers in this process. No longer do we warehouse people in hospital beds, or we denote the growth of our hospitals by the number of beds, but we look at the way admissions are done and the technology that is ordered. So, we have a functional problem in the Northern Territory in the terms of the way …

Mr Bailey interjecting.

Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Wanguri.

Mr BURKE: It is probably of interest to those listening to this broadcast that the opposition is not the slightest bit interested in the explanation ...

Mr Bailey: We are interested. That is what we are so concerned about.

Madam SPEAKER: Order! Members of the opposition, you are being far too disorderly this morning.

Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, if the opposition took the time to look at the issues that are involved - and I plead with them to do that - we might get some balance, rather than hysteria, in the arguments that are being put out there.

We have an access problem in the Northern Territory because all of our health services are predominantly delivered by government. We are proud of that. We have built those services over many years, and we are proud of the services we deliver. But it is an access problem because 51 000 Territorians carry private health insurance. In fact, if you take out the Aboriginal population, almost 40% of Territorians carry private health insurance. They have an access problem because they are unable to access the services that they are paying for on a daily basis.

Against that, we have no viable private hospital sector in the Northern Territory. The Leader of the Opposition can run arguments far and wide about why Darwin Private Hospital is not successful, and point to the fact that is why privatisation and private hospitals will not work in the Northern Territory, and it is flat wrong. The reason why that hospital does not work is that it is a stand alone business in a finite population catchment in the Northern Territory. Does the member for Nhulunbuy carry private health insurance? That is an interesting question? Do you, or don’t you? I wonder how many members on the other side of the House carry private health insurance. It is an interesting question.

The reality is that if you look not only at Darwin...

Members interjecting.

Madam SPEAKER: Order! The minister is finding it difficult to speak.

Mr BURKE: If we look at the dispersion of the population in the Northern Territory, we recognise that 51 000 Territorians carry private health insurance, and then we wonder why a stand alone private business cannot survive. I say that the answers are self evident. That is the situation at Darwin Private. It has no relationship of any worth with Royal Darwin Hospital. It cannot share facilities. It cannot share staff. It cannot prioritise surgical facilities, and that is one of the reasons that particular hospital...

Members interjecting.

Mr BURKE: If the opposition spoke one at a time, I might hear some of the interjections, but it is just a roar coming back.

We have an equity problem in the Northern Territory in terms of how services are delivered. The reality is that the access to hospital services in the Northern Territory should be the same for Tennant Creek as it is for Alice Springs, as it is for people who live in the Darwin area, and for people who live in the Palmerston rural area. The reality is that that is not the case and we have to get far more equity in the way our services are structured.

We have a staffing and retention problem in the Northern Territory. It is difficult to attract staff and it’s difficult to retain staff. One of the reasons for that is there are not the opportunities for staff to get proper advancement in their own careers. It is very hard to attract specialists to the Northern Territory when they have almost no capability of operating in the private sector as well as the public sector.

We also have a structural problem in the Northern Territory. Our hospitals were designed for the way we delivered health 15 or 20 years ago and the reality is that health is no longer delivered that way. We have to re-engineer those hospitals, or rebuild, in order to cater for the future.

The private sector is already involved in health in the Northern Territory. I heard the Leader of the Opposition this morning on the radio saying health services should be delivered by the public sector. The reality is $60m of our health budget goes to non-government organisations that deliver a whole range of health services to Territorians today. What we are trying to do now is look at our hospitals, look at the cost drivers in those hospitals, and see how we can get a better range of services overall for Territorians.

When the opposition talks about where this process will end ...

Ms MARTIN: A point of order, Madam Speaker! This is actually Question Time. This is turning into a ministerial statement.

Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your answer has been rather long, would you perhaps wind it up?

Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, it’s very important that I go through this process because I’m responding to the circular that I’ve tabled, which lists 10 reasons why Territorians should reject these…

Members interjecting.

Madam SPEAKER: Order! Would you answer the question?

Mr BURKE: The process we are going through have these success factors, and it’s very important for Territorians to understand these success factors. We intend to gain for Territorians an increased range of services and the choice of services that they wish to access. We want to decrease our public sector costs so that health insurance funds and the Commonwealth government are picking up far more of the cost of health care for Territorians. We want to improve our facilities so that they are both functional and structurally appropriate for the sorts of health delivery that we need now, and in the future. We need to put clear direction and control mechanisms into Territory Health Services, particularly our hospitals, so that we can trend our own costs for the future and, most importantly, we want to maintain public support and confidence in this process as we go through it.

Where will this process end? Who knows, but unless those success factors are met, the government’s objectives won’t be achieved and we won’t continue the process. It is very important that the opposition, if it wants to understand exactly what’s involved, seeks further briefings, does some analysis themselves and maybe answers a simple question. A simple question would be: Faced with the facts, how would you do it? Faced with the facts, how would you, as a responsible government address the issue? I will tell you one way. This is the way the Carr Labor Government addressed one of the issues that the Leader of the Opposition put in her statement, and that is that privatisation, or the process government is going through …

Mrs HICKEY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! This has gone beyond a joke. We have had 4 questions. We are over half time in question time.

Madam SPEAKER: I agree with you. Minister, your answer has gone on far too long. Please finish your answer.

Mr BURKE: I don’t think it is any joke when a thousand Territorians are going to be demonstrating, based on the sort of hysteria that has been whipped up by the Labor party and the unions, but I will finish off on one point. The Leader of the Opposition says that this process would involve the blowing out of waiting lists. First of all, she knows nothing about waiting lists and the way waiting lists are managed. But, certainly, she is promoting the way the Carr Labor government said they would fix the problem when they came to government. This is the way the Carr Labor government’s waiting lists went. They went from 4500 ...

Mrs HICKEY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! The minister is now going on to New South Wales. For goodness sake, this is the Territory parliament. He is the minister. He has the responsibility, and if he cannot answer the question, he should sit down!

Madam SPEAKER: Minister, keep your answer relevant to the question, and please wind up.

Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, I am searching for the way the Labor Party would address the problems that are self-evident. One way is to do what the Labor government did in New South Wales. This is the way the Labor government handled waiting lists. There were 4500 on the waiting list when they came to government and there are now over 5000 on the waiting list, after coming to government on a promise that they would reduce waiting lists. I will table that graph for the benefit of those who are interested in the media.

But an interesting question for the members opposite would be: when you stand out there and criticise, ask how you would address it when faced with the factors that are well published? How would you address the problem? If you cannot even handle the whole of the Territory, how would you handle the problem at Royal Darwin and Darwin Private? Think for a moment, and if you do not go down a similar process, I would be very surprised.

Madam SPEAKER: Minister, I have to say that answer was far too long for Question Time. Forty minutes and we have had 4 questions. It is far too long.