Page 2663 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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did not cause the concern. We raised the debate because there was concern on the part of those people involved in running and managing the hospital and on the part of the community that needs the services of that hospital.
The Minister questions our right to talk about the fact that the life of this board is about to come to an end. The Minister could easily have removed all of the public concern, all of the debate, all of the perception of indecision on his part - just another aspect of the indecisiveness of the Minister in dealing with anything to do with his portfolio. All he had to do was to say that the board would be perpetuated. Why is it necessary to disestablish this board at this time? It was a management board, established by a Labor Federal Minister. He made it an interim board only because he knew that self-government was around the corner. He did not necessarily want to bind this Government for a long period of time as to its membership, so he made it an interim board. But the intention of that Labor Federal Minister was that it would be a continuing management board.
Our Minister only had to say that the board would continue, and there would have been no further public debate on the matter. He can change the constitution of it a bit if he likes; he can change the membership of it. Nobody said that he could not do that. Mr Duby suggested that we were taking away the right of the Minister to make decisions on these matters. That is rubbish. He could easily have made such a decision, and then the controversy would have been over, and the question of who is running the hospitals would have been pretty much determined.
To suggest that because there is a management board there this somehow impedes the Minister in the exercising of his responsibility to his portfolio, again is nonsense. This board is subject to direction by the Minister. If he does not think they are doing the job right, he can easily tell them what he wants them to do. But it seems to me from what I have heard about this - and perhaps Mr Duby needs to get himself informed a little better before he criticises the motion put forward by the Opposition - that the reason why there is so much concern on the part of the board is that they were making recommendations to the Minister as to what he should do to rectify the overexpenditure, and every time they did so, they were told, "You cannot do that because it will upset the trade unions". It was because of that that the board finally had to put their recommendations in writing, because they were making recommendations to the Minister which he was declining to accept or allow them to put into effect. They finally had to put it in writing because they were in an indefensible position if they did not formally go the Minister and seek his support for what it was attempting to do.
So again it was the Minister's indecision and the Minister's equivocation that led to the board registering its concern and seeking the Minister's support. It is very
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