Page 3651 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 October 1990
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Mr Moore: It was shonky.
MR BERRY: You are right, Mr Moore, it was shonky; but this is a shonky government and I suppose we can expect that sort of treatment of the people of the ACT and the people of Australia generally.
Mr Kaine: One of these days you will lift your debating skills to something that is decent.
MR BERRY: I see the leading man is back and again has graced the Assembly with his presence. I am very happy that he is back because I would like him to see some of the impact that this decision will have on the community.
In the Estimates Committee hearings we learned from statistics supplied by the Government just what is happening to our public hospital system. In September 1989, when I was Health Minister - and I take great credit for this, Mr Speaker - there were 993 people waiting for beds in public hospitals. In an ideal world nobody would have to wait any time, but it is a fact of life that people do have to wait. The figures that I have go back to June 1985, and that was the lowest waiting list since then. I am happy to take the credit for achieving that very low waiting list in our hospital system.
By June 1990, just a few months after the Government was taken over by the Liberal coalition opposite, the waiting list for surgery in our hospitals had jumped by about 40 per cent. Up to 1,384 people were waiting for beds in our hospital system. How can this Government sit back and expect any respect in the community when so many people are suffering pain and discomfort because of their handling of the hospital system? We know why people are suffering pain and discomfort in the hospital system; it is because of the Government's plan. The plan is to wind back the number of public hospital beds, in percentage terms, which are available to the people of the ACT. The fact of the matter is that there will be fewer public beds available to the people of the ACT when this Government is finished.
They have told us that it will jump from around 15 per cent up towards 25 per cent - a massive 10 per cent deduction of public beds from the public sector. That means, of course, that it will impact on the people that Trevor Kaine says he supports - the aged. They will be the ones who will be hurt most. Other people are not like Trevor Kaine. He can afford expensive private medical insurance. He can afford to pay over the counter because he is highly paid.
Mr Kaine: Yes, I am being paid such a lot of money by the ACT Legislative Assembly.
MR BERRY: Why do you not try living on what some other people in this Territory have to live on? They are the ones who have to wait for service in the hospital system which you are about to destroy.
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