The latest Capital Works Report released by ACT Treasury shows that both Canberra Health Services and ACT Health continue to underspend their budget.

This follows revelations in September that the ACT Government only spent one-third of its capital works budget for the past five years.

For projects more than $10 million in value, halfway through the 2022/23 financial year, CHS and ACT Health together had only spent 42% of available funds. CHS had spent around $17 million despite having $50 million available for major projects.

Shadow Minister for Health Leanne Castley criticised the Government for trumpeting the fact that health has the largest allocation in the Territory budget when these dollars are not being spent.

By contrast, spending for building the light rail to Woden exceeded the $45 million dollars budgeted by Major Projects Canberra.

“It’s clear the Government is more focussed on expediting its light rail project to Woden than providing vital equipment and services the ACT’s Health system desperately needs,” Ms Castley said.

“The ACT Health system needs dollars spent by this Government rather than simply budgeted.

Ms Castley said Canberra Health Services had only spent $887,000 out of almost $7 million budgeted, on a project which aimed to improve Canberra’s health infrastructure by delivering new clinical equipment and services at the Canberra Hospital.

“This is almost as much as the $800,000 CHS is spending on its rebranding exercise.

“We know that health expenditure has to increase each year, but when it is not spent by the directorates then we are left with a shortage of beds, clinical spaces, and infrastructure.

“This year we have seen that our Emergency Department wait times are the worst in the country, more than 4 out of 5 Canberrans are overdue for their outpatient appointments and staff turnover is increasing year on year.

“The Government has also failed to increase health expenditure in line with inflation, and this has resulted in real cuts to the health budget which has caused service delivery to stagnate as demand increases,” Ms Castley concluded.