Page 190 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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Let us look now at health. In the initial instance of Mr Humphries attempting to cut into the problems in the health budget, we have seen a disastrous handling of industrial relations with the Australian Nursing Federation and the other unions. It has been absolutely disastrous. I cannot help wondering, having read an article in this morning's paper taken from the Canberra Doctor, why it is that the nurses' conditions were attacked and the doctors can sit back and say, "Oh, it is very nice for the nurses' conditions to be attacked". They are cutting off their noses to spite their faces, in effect. Maybe the answer is to look at doctors' conditions very carefully and ensure that the boards are not set up in such a way as to protect those doctors' conditions. Maybe those who are earning more should be more vulnerable, and perhaps that applies right across the board.
That is the problem with the particular structure of this razor gang. It is not that you have a razor gang - as I said, I admire you for that, I think that is appropriate, and I think areas need to be identified - but with the particular structure of this razor gang, by its very nature, it clearly will identify cuts that need to be made that do not, in effect, hurt its members. I suggest that we are highly unlikely to see cuts in capital budget expenditure on projects in building and development, yet the budget on that side is enormous. It has to be looked at carefully. I am not attempting to pre-empt. I am throwing in suggestions as to what it should look at - - -
Mr Humphries: It's a pretty bad suggestion.
MR MOORE: If you listen, you might just understand the significance. You have just said that you are very happy with the structure of this board. I am happy with the concept of the board, but I am trying to give a couple of examples just to explain to you what you have done by the nature of this board, by putting into it this range of people - I am not talking about them particularly - with their backgrounds, and by excluding the people who will be the victims of the razor gang. I do not see that there are any potential victims of the razor gang on the board, and to me that is horrific.
So let me emphasise what was said in the editorial in the Canberra Times, and I ask Mr Kaine to pay attention to it. I emphasise that the board that he has suggested needs to be restructured. What I find even more disconcerting about it is that the Residents Rally members, who keep suggesting that they are on about community consultation and representing the community, have allowed a board like this to go ahead. Mr Duby, who has long been associated with unions, has allowed a board like this to go ahead. I wonder just what influence or what consultation went on within Government circles when this was established and just what happened because it really is totally inappropriate. I ask those people in particular to look at it, to go to your Chief Minister and say to them, "This board is not appropriately structured".
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