Page 2806 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 14 August 1990
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Mr Kaine: They get tetchy when people distort the truth, too.
MR BERRY: Where have you been? What have you been drinking for dinner?
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members!
MR BERRY: This is about the only exciting part in the debate tonight. If one gets to his feet and lays a few facts on the line, the whole - - -
Mr Collaery: We are trying to run a ministry and suffer you at the same time.
MR BERRY: Well, give up on the running of a ministry, Bernard, because you have not made it yet. Of course, there were no negotiations with the Federal Government departments and Ministers with an interest and expertise in these areas. The negotiations yet to be done relate to contracted medical staff. We live in a city where there is a particularly low rate of salaried staff in medicine, and proposals in that report to radically reform present staffing patterns may involve industrial difficulties. Of course, that matter has not been addressed. So there is a lot of work to be done. The Government needs to pay due regard to the additional work that is required and to the holes in the report. There is a likelihood that there will be major difficulties if the Government does not examine these points closely.
I must say it is amusing to see how impressed the authors of the report were by the willingness of those in charge of the hospital service to consider substantial additional funding in the interests of raising patient care, having stated that a university hospital in the ACT would involve large expenditures, both capital and recurrent. It seems obvious to me that one group that they did not talk to is the discredited machete mob, the Priorities Review Board. (Extension of time granted)
How many professors will there be? Where will they come from? Why have seven more professors to train the same number of doctors? Of course, we need specialists and not generally trained medicos. Surely other options should have been examined to provide the Territory with specialists to enhance our regional centre of excellence role. Of course, looking at medical research and medical training should be a priority of any study.
All of the issues that I have addressed in my speech on this subject tonight go back to a requirement that the Government take a close look at this issue and take into account recognised social justice strategies in relation to the delivery of better health services in the ACT. As far as this Government's record goes, it would appear that the people of Canberra could not expect the Government to have any conscience about the issue of social justice.
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