$99m Health financial crash all Hill’s fault
Feb 17, 2012
Martin Hamilton-Smith MP
Shadow Minister for Health & Ageing
Shadow Minister for Mental Health Shadow Minister for Substance Abuse
$99m Health financial crash all Hill’s fault
Minister Hill has been forced to reveal in Parliament that his Health Budget is set to blow out $99 million this financial year, totalling $187 million in blow outs over a two year period.
“On the 15th of December the Minister acknowledged a $35 million overspend on Health in the current financial year on top of $88 million in the previous year. This year‟s figure has now blown out $99 million for this year alone”, Shadow Minister for Health Martin Hamilton-Smith said.
“Minister Hill is rightly under pressure about Budget blowouts and financial mismanagement within the Department of Health Budget identified by the Auditor-General which flow from poor leadership and failed IT systems integration. This is clearly part of the blow out!
“Parliament has also heard conflicting information from the Minister about tens of millions of dollars of unreconciled accounts, double payment of bills, chaos with financial accounts and a failure to submit financial information to the Auditor-General on time as required by the Public Sector Act 2009.
“It is now 122 days since the Auditor-General tabled his Annual Report to Parliament on 18th October last year. Never before has a Minister failed audit standards so completely.
“The Auditor-General has laid the blame at the feet of the Minister revealing that he presented the Oracle Corporate System IT management project to Cabinet without a cost-benefits analysis back in 2009, a highly irregular process.
“The Auditor-General has also accused the Minister of misinforming Cabinet at the time of the original submission by wrongly telling his colleagues the Oracle investment would be $21 million, when the full cost was known to be $33.6 million.
“On top of this, the Minister has been forced to reveal that a crisis group has been formed at a cost of $10 million over four years led by highly paid bureaucrat Mr Steve Archer ($300,000 p.a.) to sort out the mess created by the Minister and existing management.
“And Treasurer Snelling told Parliament on 10th November 2011, „I‟m not advised there are any particular issues in Health about which I need to be particularly concerned‟.
Both the Treasurer and the Minister for Health are demonstrating their financial and leadership credentials. They would struggle to get a job anywhere” Mr Hamilton-Smith said.