Page 1470 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Humphries: That is rubbish. That is drivel. You have got the wrong figures, Wayne.
MR BERRY: Read the costings. This Minister here is deliberately misleading the people of the ACT in his quest to hand over sections of the public health sector to his private industry mates.
There are other issues in that hospital plan which are severely lacking. One of the issues that I think needs to be discussed is the relocation of a nursing home on the Royal Canberra Hospital site. The Government seems blissfully unaware of the Federal nursing home guidelines and has announced its plan to relocate the Jindalee Nursing Home without any consultation again. That is something we are getting pretty used to. Here is a Minister, Mr Humphries, who is hell-bent on dragging the ACT health system down to the lowest common denominator. He has already said that what he intends to do is to drag it down to that lowest common denominator by handing over a significant part of the public hospital system to the private sector. He has already started that with his attack on the provision of women's services and the privatisation of obstetric beds in the handover of those beds to the John James Memorial Hospital.
I am sorry that Mr Collaery is not here to listen to what I have to say about the lack of future direction in relation to welfare. One of the most shocking things that has been heard in recent times in relation to this Minister is his statement in advance of the report on ACT welfare services by the consultant, Bruce Callaghan and Associates. By his own admission "Mr Welfare" opposite has set about implementing new and wonderful services without the benefit of the expensive consultant's report which will address important welfare issues. With the report due in the next few weeks, the Minister has announced these new programs; programs which, of course, he has admitted were started at the expense of others. This redirection in the focus of welfare programs has taken place before this important report was received by the Government.
Prisons, of course, are another example of knee-jerk reactions. I see that my speech notes suggest that they are another example of "jerk reactions", but I would not say that in this place. They are knee-jerk reactions and a further demonstration of the sort of adhockery that this Government will lower itself to in the delivery of services in the prisons. It took the suicide of an ACT prisoner in Goulburn to drag out announcements by the deputy leader that there will be a new gaol for juveniles. It seems that his plan was to get them off the streets in their wild years so they could go out there and restore old farm machinery. I do not know that there is much of a market for that sort of stuff and I do not know that there is much of a market for the sorts of skills that one would develop in restoring old farm machinery once one was finished with
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .