Page 2652 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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It is irresponsible that a report which, as far as I can tell, has been highly regarded by the Government up until now - it has been accepted in broad terms by the Government up until now - should be rejected in one of its most fundamental and important recommendations. It is a recommendation which makes sense; it is a recommendation which, to my knowledge, is the model used in every other Australian hospital system; yet it is a model which this Government appears to want to reject. I have to ask why that is the case.
This motion, as I have said, does not prevent the Government from fiddling with the composition of the board. I accept that is the Government's prerogative and, if it wishes, it may remove people from the present board, add people to it, expand its membership slightly or contract it slightly. I do not personally have any problem with that. The Government is the Government; it is free to make executive decisions of that kind; and, although it would be nice for the opposition parties to be consulted on those issues, on the question of membership of that board, I do not insist on it. I accept that the Government has the power to make decisions of that kind for itself. But it must be a model of that kind.
Mr Collaery in yesterday's debate on the MPI made a very good point about the way in which advisory committees tend to operate and the way in which they tend to defeat the object of a good board system, which is to provide for decision making by people who are actually responsible for day-to-day management. He said something along the lines that a good board system does have the advantage that people know who make the decisions, they know who is responsible and it is to some extent removed - at least one step removed - from the day-to-day political considerations that affect a Minister.
I think the motion put forward by the Liberals is fairly unambiguous. It asserts confidence in the interim board of directors. I believe that confidence is the only thing that this house can vote in those directors, given that no charge of any kind has been laid against them, to my knowledge. Nothing has been put to me or to this house which I think reflects badly on that board of directors and, given the way in which they proceeded with the task of identifying problems and cost overruns and other issues critical to the running of our hospital system, they ought to have our support.
The second thing this motion does is to identify the most appropriate form of management of our hospital system. I believe that that system is, as I said, a proper board of management similar to those used in other places in Australia.
I was curious to note the Minister say earlier today that the Opposition's attack on the Government's handling of the
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