Page 2664 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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easy for the Minister to try to throw the responsibility back on the Liberal Party. We are not in government; we are in opposition; and it is our responsibility to see that this Government performs. The Government is not performing and the Minister is not performing, and we have an obligation to say so. It is not just a question of whether we want to say so; we have an obligation to do so.
The Minister talks about cheap headlines. Well, we did not generate that headline - cheap or otherwise. The Minister attracted that headline himself; it had nothing to do with anything that we were doing.
I understand that there was some suggestion that the board ought to be done away with because it was costing $150,000 to service. Well, I would submit that if the Minister does away with the board and sets things up so that everything has to come up for his attention and his decision before anything can happen in the hospital system, first of all, there will be an incredible administrative delay before anything gets done at all. Secondly, the support infrastructure that the Minister will have to set up to make sure that the material comes to him in a form that he can digest, so that he can take a decision and feed it back, will cost more than the $150,000 which is alleged to be the cost of supporting this interim board. He is not only making a rod for his own back in terms of having to take on all of the executive responsibility for the hospitals if he does away with this board, but he will, I am quite sure, generate an increasing cost and not a reducing one.
There is a very fundamental question here about disestablishing this board now. Whether the Minister accepts it or not, whether he agrees with it or not, there is a crisis of confidence in the management of our hospitals. We have got a board that has been there for a year and has developed a certain amount of expertise in running those hospitals. If the Minister disestablishes this board now, is he not creating a worse situation than the one we have already? If he appoints a new board it is going to take some months to get up to speed before it is in a position to advise him on what he should do. He has got a perfectly expert board there now, and I believe he is doing himself, if not the community at large, a great disservice if he simply does away with this board at this time when there is so much concern in the hospitals.
One other point that I want to speak about briefly, Mr Speaker, is Mr Duby's assertion that he does not know whether the blow-out is a normal seasonal one or not. Well, I do not know either. But I would submit that the managing board does, and that is why they went to the Minister and expressed their concern, because they know that it is not unusual or unseasonal. They were convinced, I am sure, that there was a cost overrun. They were the experts and that is what they were appointed to do. So I am not of a mind to question their advice to the Minister,
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