Page 4150 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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Attached to that letter are copies of seven ambulance case-slips, all dated in the last few months of 1989, prior to 5 December 1989, which indicate that the ACT Ambulance Service was contracted to provide stand-by ambulance services at various sporting events in the ACT, including the Canberra Harness Racing Club on 18 November, the ACT Racing Club on 21 October, the Canberra Auto Racing Association on 21 October, the Canberra Racecourse Club on 2 September, and the Fairbairn Park motorcycle races on 26 November.
Mr Speaker, I seek leave to have the letter and the attachments incorporated into Hansard.
Leave granted.
Documents incorporated at Appendix 1
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, as the letter indicates, all these cases are cases where, during Mr Berry's thankfully short time as a Minister, on-duty rostered ambulance crews attended sporting events. That clearly is contrary to what he said on Tuesday to this Assembly and clearly is the basis on which he made a number of attacks against the Government on that question, implying that the practice of supplying on-duty rostered ambulance crews to sporting events is an innovation of this Government when in fact that is quite false and misleading.
This is a clear case, Mr Speaker, where Mr Berry has misled the Assembly. As I said earlier, he implied that we were in dereliction of our duty and that we were in some way involved in a cover-up. In fact he said "cover-up", quite explicitly. Mr Berry has conducted nothing but a shameful and dishonest campaign to discredit the Government for pursuing exactly the same policy as he did when he was in government. He has, to use his own favourite expression, been found out. I think it would be only decent for Mr Berry to do the proper thing and withdraw the assertions.
MR SPEAKER: Before we proceed, Mr Humphries, having just had a look at the ambulance case-slips that you have asked to have incorporated in Hansard, the quality of them is very poor. An alternative may be that we incorporate the detail therefrom or just table the documents.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I acknowledge that the quality is rather poor, but I think it is very important for them to be incorporated in Hansard as proof of this important allegation made by the Government. Without those documents in Hansard it is not possible for the record to accurately reflect that Mr Berry's statements were in fact misleading and false. I would request that they be photocopied on to the pages of Hansard.
MR SPEAKER: We will do our best. The quality may be poor.
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