Page 3898 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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This Government's inaction has led to a situation where the Ambulance Service is in crisis. There is no indication that anything will change, because the Minister has done nothing in the past, except cover up the information. Time after time we have called for accurate figures from the Government, but the Government has been so embarrassed that it would not provide them to the Estimates Committee. I know why it would not provide them. It was because it would reinforce that embarrassment and show Government members up for what they are.
Mr Speaker, not only is this Minister responsible for tearing apart our education and hospital systems, but he has now set about our ambulance system. And there one goes by this place - probably only one of two in the Ambulance Service, because of this Minister.
Mr Kaine: This record is wearing a bit thin, Wayne. Why do you not come up with something new?
MR BERRY: Of course it is wearing a bit thin. The old Chief Minister over here would be getting a little tetchy because it shows his Government up in a bad light. Of course, you will get the truth only from this side of the house, Mr Chief Minister, and that is something you have some difficulty with, as has been seen in the past by your performance in this place. Save our ambulance system!
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.35): Mr Speaker, I think Mr Berry rises in this place secretly a very embarrassed man, because Mr Berry knows - although he has kept a very stony and careful visage of not caring today - that the standards on which he attempts to hoist this Government are exactly the same standards on which he was hoist last year. The difference is that this Government's record is actually better.
Mr Berry: You have done nothing.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is actually better. I have done plenty, Mr Berry, and I will come to that in just a moment. There is one point that needs to be made before we get into this debate seriously, Mr Speaker, and that is to ask ourselves why this matter was raised today. It is no coincidence that today happens to be the day that this matter was raised, and the reason it was raised is that today the Government is going to pass - I have no reason to believe it will not - tobacco legislation. This is very important legislation - perhaps the most significant legislation this Government has yet passed. Mr Berry does not want this Government to get the front page or any other front line credit for that piece of legislation today. He wants to take it off the front page and take it out of the lead stories in the news bulletins tonight. He wants to have some smokescreen to divert attention away; so he chooses ambulances. A nice serve - a soggy, unsubstantiated attack on ambulances. That is what this is. It is unsubstantiated.
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