ESTIMATES COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS – 17 JUNE 2010
Mr RYAN: Again, by hospital we expect within 1% to 2% they may go over, but we will cover that
internally with existing resources.
Mr CONLAN: 1% to 2%?
Mr RYAN: Yes. It is a crystal ball.
Mr CONLAN: I think we all know what it is. It is just a matter of finding it and getting the department to
admit it.
Mr RYAN: We still have a few weeks to go before the end of next year, so we are still spending
money.
Mr CONLAN: Yes, exactly. So there is a chance that there could be a reasonable over run and the
figures that have been suggested could probably be accurate?
Mr VATSKALIS: If, in the next few weeks, we get a new wave of swine flu with …
Mr CONLAN: So, that is all it would take? It would take something special like that?
Mr CHAIRMAN: The minister has the call.
Mr VATSKALIS: The thing is with hospitals, health is not: ‘I am planning to have 100 people in the
hospital this year’. There might be 120 people, something may go wrong, something may have
happened and, you know very well, you cannot really plan for so many people to be admitted to
hospital. You only need about 20 people to have some critical renal problem to actually blow your
costs out, because they have been admitted to hospital, you cannot say if we have something like
that.
Rotavirus recently in Alice Springs, there was an epidemic of that virus; a number of kids had to be
admitted to hospital. You cannot predict it
Mr WOOD: E.coli.
Mr VATSKALIS: We have not had an incident yet.
Mr CONLAN: Okay, so barring that, these unforeseen circumstances, minister …
Mr VATSKALIS: I think David made it very clear that the over run will be 1% to 2% at the current
projections.
Mr RYAN: Our statutory requirement is to report by output and that is a different structure to what you
are looking at in the hospital specific. The hospital specific is just an internal management target we
set, and there are other things in acute care that are outside the hospitals, like in across- border
patients who are paying for patients to get treatment interstate, and that all forms a part of that
admitted and non-admitted patients.
Mr CONLAN: Can you assure us, minister, there has been no money diverted from other programs
to, for lack of a better word, to prop-up the Alice Springs and Darwin Hospitals in terms of the budget
situation? Definitely not or …
Mr RYAN: There has been no diversion of budgets from other areas.
ESTIMATES COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS – 17 JUNE 2010
Mr CONLAN: … into other areas or other programs.
Mr RYAN: No.
Mr CONLAN: What about the suggestion that Alice Springs Hospital has been using intervention
money instead of NT government money to keep it in the black? In other words, a procedure as such
undertaken at the Alice Springs Hospital is being paid for with intervention money as opposed to NT
government money. Is there any truth in that suggestion at all?
Mr RYAN: No, there would not be.
Mr CONLAN: Absolutely not?
Mr RYAN: Alice Springs Hospital would have got some funding with the intervention, I do not believe
it got any this financial year but, whatever was provided for it was allocated and would have been
spent appropriately.
Mr CONLAN: Okay. We move onto Aero-Med.
Mr CHAIRMAN: That is Output 2.1. You indicated Aero-Med was in 2.1.
Mr RYAN: Yes.
Mr CHAIRMAN: Do you have a question about Aero-Med?
Mr CONLAN: Yes, I do. Minister, when does the contract with Pearl to provide Aero-Med services
between Katherine cease?
Mr VATSKALIS: Pearl Aviation will cease to provide aero-medical services to the top of the Northern
Territory on 30 June 2010.
Mr CONLAN: How many aircraft are currently supplied under this contract?
Mr VATSKALIS: Four. Pearl Aviation.
Mr CONLAN: Who will have the contract after this date?
Mr VATSKALIS: From 1 July 2010 to 31 December 2010 an interim provider, CareFlight New South
Wales. New South Wales is actually misleading, because CareFlight is registered here.
Mr CONLAN: What is the breakdown of this service, minister? Is there any real difference between
what Pearl has offered and what CareFlight will offer?
Mr VATSKALIS: The arrangement with CareFlight is different because CareFlight will do the logistic
coordination, provide the aircraft, and also the rotary wing helicopter.
Mr CONLAN: What is the price of the contract?
Mr VATSKALIS: That is commercial-in-confidence, and I cannot disclose that. The reason also is we
have a tender in place at the moment, so it would be very unwise to start …
Mr CONLAN: What has the department budgeted for?
ESTIMATES COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS – 17 JUNE 2010
Mr VATSKALIS: That would clearly indicate how much we are going to pay and would breach
confidentiality.
Mr CONLAN: The situation in Katherine, where are with that? I know Pearl is doing a 12/7 there.
Have Care Flight indicated they would be prepared to do a 24/7 into Katherine?
Ms CAHILL: Robyn Cahill, Director, Systems Performance Acute Care. Recently there has been
advice that we will be able to look at revising what is occurring in Katherine. Discussions with Defence
are they are going to do a burn. It was planned for June, but they have had to delay because of the
late Wet, so it is planned for August. We will have another look at what is going on with Katherine
once that burn has occurred. There are concerns about being able to identify the number of, dare I
say it, wallabies present around the strip at this point in time because of the height of the grass and
the foliage around the airstrip.
Once the burn has occurred CareFlight have indicated they will reassess, which is an ongoing
situation with Pearl as well. They have also indicated they would reassess once the ability to do so
was there.
Mr CONLAN: Does the department have any idea of the numbers of wallabies within the …
Mr VATSKALIS: We rely on the information provided to us by the Defence department.
Mr CONLAN: What information have they given you?
Mr VATSKALIS: Unfortunately somebody had the bright idea to fence the place before they removed
the wallabies. They created an artificial population inside the fences protected from any predators,
with plenty of feeding and watering points, so the population exploded.
Ms PURICK: Are going to burn the bush to kill the wallabies?
Mr WOOD: Have they not built a second fence?
Mr VATSKALIS: Yes, and they practice humane culling. They have to remove the vegetation so they
can see the wallabies.
Ms CAHILL: A point of clarification on the burn. In relation to the drying out of the foliage around the
airstrip, it is a safety risk, so they do a burn every Dry Season to remove the safety risk, the same as
occurs at Darwin airport. That is why the burn is occurring, and once that has occurred they will be
able to see more clearly the number of wallabies.
Mr VATSKALIS: The other thing, the decision to land or take off from the airport is not the
department’s decision, it is the pilot. The pilot makes the decision. The reason the Pearl Aviation pilot
would not land or take off at night was because of the wallaby danger. When you have an F13 taking
off which hits a wallaby the damage would be minimal cost, however if you have a Twin hitting a
wallaby at take off it will most likely be disastrous, like the one recently in New South Wales that
crashed on the strip.
Mr WOOD: Could I ask what they do for outback strips?
Mr VATSKALIS: Because of the drought we have wallabies in the Top End, and we had a number of
other airstrips with wallabies - Victoria River had a problem and we allocated money for fencing. We
have a problem because of the drought situation. In the Centre you do not have a drought situation,
and the wallabies will start moving out.
Mr WOOD: We have had aero-med for 30 something years?
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