Page 235 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 1990
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MR BERRY: Mr Kaine said the Royal Canberra Hospital should be gradually closed down as a major hospital and its beds should be given to alternative uses without spending a lot of money. That means we put all our old people and the infirm in a run-down dump - - -
Mr Kaine: It does not mean that at all.
MR BERRY: Without spending a lot of money on it; that is what you said.
Mr Collaery: That is what you said, too.
MR BERRY: Low intensity nursing care, low intensity convalescence, the frail aged? Don't ever say that I said that to you, Mr Collaery.
Mr Kaine: Low intensity nursing care - don't you know what that is?
MR BERRY: Mothers with babies could be moved in, allowing for the sale of the sites of the Jindalee nursing home and the Queen Elizabeth nursing home for mothers and babies, for large sums of money. Royal Canberra would absorb these patients virtually without cost and the sale of the sites would pay for the thousand-bed hospital at the Woden Valley Hospital.
Mr Kaine: I did not say that; I do not know where you got that from?
MR BERRY: You did say it.
Mr Grassby: It is in the newspaper, Mr Kaine.
Mr Kaine: No, you are quoting from the Canberra Times, I presume.
Mrs Grassby: No, Mr Kaine; we are saying what you said.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Kaine: In other words, the Canberra Times said that.
MR BERRY: The fact of the matter is - and you know it, because we provided you with a briefing on it - that it would cost about $300m to do that on a single site, and if you think you are going to get $100m for those other sites you are kidding yourself. So do not talk about misrepresentation on budgeting in this place. Your Government is the one that is at the centre of all of the misrepresentation that is going on at the moment, and that is what this Opposition is about - exposing all the flaws in your program. I think we are starting to deliver on it; the people are becoming aware of what you lot are up to. Anyway, Mr Speaker, there are a couple of other speakers who want to have a say on the issue. I think that so much has been said as will allow the public to make a decision
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