ALONGSTANDING POT

 

Sue Hickey

I’m calling for a judicial or at least a select parliamentary inquiry into the underspend in health and where the allocation of GST money has gone. There’s been a complete underspend in our health system, and by any measure, it’s somewhere between 1 billion and 2.8 billion dollars. But at least it is unaccountable and we cannot find out why the government has not allocated the money correctly. So what I’m saying is that the Australian Grants Commission allocates extra GST to our population, nearly double per population, because of our sickest, poorest and oldest population, Yet it spends 10% less than any other state. And this is certainly not good enough. So we have 15,000 people waiting for dental appointments, we have 51,000 people waiting for an appointment through the hospital, we have 12,000 people waiting for desperate surgery. And if you’re waiting for a hip replacement, you can wait for year and a half in agony. But on top of that, try getting into mental health facilities, that is almost impossible. So what I’m asking for is: where has the money gone? And why is it not being spent year on year? There’s something dodgy when the money’s being spent in other places other than health where it’s directly allocated. I think it needs to be investigated so this rot stops