Page 234 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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MR BERRY: We get "ho hum" from Mr Collaery. I will get on to him later. Social justice is not on the agenda of those opposite. They will deny the funds and the resources to maintain this city. They will cut services and throw the citizens of this city on to unemployment queues. They have demonstrated already that 3,000 jobs are going to be taken out of the system, and there is as yet no indication where they are going to take up the slack. Of course, we might get a bit of mumbo jumbo and rhetoric about it being taken up by some boost to the private sector, but how are they going to do it? There is no sign of any formula - certainly at this stage - that will assist them in delivering these sorts of hollow promises.
The first step in their strategy is to downgrade our health services and close hospitals. The target is the Royal Canberra Hospital; no question about that. Mr Collaery, or rather his party - the rank and file of which was responsible for getting him elected here - has a very clear position about the Royal Canberra Hospital. It is to stay as it is or better. Mr Duby, of course, has a very different position. He came in here with the position of doing nothing but then decided once he got here that Royal Canberra Hospital should stay. Now the whole complexion of the Government has changed and they are going to dump the hospital as well.
It is a very clear position. It is the same as the Greinerisation of the public transport system in New South Wales. You are creating stability - you create discontent with the system and then develop a program to close the system down. That is what they are doing to the public transport system in New South Wales and that is what this crowd is going to do with our health system.
The Chief Minister has chosen to exercise all his hospital planning skills and build a single large hospital - fund it, he says, from asset sales. What a joke. He cannot even add up. Not only could not the Chief Minister understand how the budget process was going to go in this house - - -
Mr Kaine: You are misquoting me, as you usually do. You either misunderstand or you misquote.
Mrs Grassby: He listened to you, Mr Kaine; why do you not listen to him?
Mr Kaine: Because he tells lies.
Mrs Grassby: You were telling lies, too.
Mr Kaine: He either misunderstands, which is usual, or he misquotes - one or the other.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Kaine! Mrs Grassby, please desist.
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