Page 2656 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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are some t's we would like to cross, and I am sure the Liberal Party does not mean that it wants the board to be exactly to a T what Kearney mentioned. I do not understand the need for a couple of the suggestions, such as having a lawyer on the board. The board should get legal advice. I do not understand why we need a lawyer on it. There may be reasons, but that requires further debate. So we support the motion as put, with that minor clarification.
MR MOORE (3.31): Mr Speaker, I feel somewhat awkward in speaking on this matter. The Rally health policy - and I still rely on those policies as a guide for me - says that the Holding hospital board will be abolished, but then it goes on to talk about the re-establishment of a different form of hospital board; in fact, a different form of health board, because the Rally perceived at that stage that, should it be in government, it would be looking to try to tie all the different forms of health into one management system, and that management "will be directly responsible to the Minister".
What we have here is a situation where I believe the Assembly is in the process of attempting to interfere with the way a Minister attempts to run his own department. If Mr Berry were in the process of removing an interim board in the middle of its working time, then I might take a different view on it, but the fact of the matter is that the interim board - and it is called an interim board - is coming to the end of its interim period.
With that in mind, what will happen if the Minister attempts to do something decisive, as people have been asking him to do for months, and re-establish a different form of board, whether it be a board or a committee system? I am not buying into the difference between Liberal and Labor philosophy. The Liberals do not like an advisory committee system, whereas it seems that Labor prefers such a system. To me, it does not matter so much which it is. As a general preference, I prefer the committee system because that leaves the Minister responsible, and then if the Minister decides not to follow the advice of a committee, then he or she wears that responsibility. I think in that way this Assembly can hold the Minister more responsible.
To vote against this motion does not mean to say that we do not have confidence in that board of management. It just means that the situation is now changing and that we may have confidence in that board of management but respect the right of the Minister to make his decision in this case about what he considers the most appropriate form of hospital administration.
There are some severe concerns that Mr Humphries raised yesterday and again today. Considering the way business in the Assembly has been going over the last couple of days, I make the point that these motions have come up with very little notice, especially after we have just spent an hour
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