Page 4408 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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extra cost to the community. That is untrue, because the community will be forced to pay more for hospital accommodation in a private hospital system.
Mr Humphries: Not if they do not want to go there.
MR BERRY: Mr Humphries says, "Not if they do not want to go there". What a joke. If they do not want to go there, they will have to go on the waiting lists that he creates in the public hospital system. Some are twelve months.
Mr Humphries: Not for emergency surgery.
MR BERRY: He says, "No, not for emergency surgery". Does that mean that the private hospital will have an accident and emergency service? I doubt it. This Minister has indicated that he does not know much about the delivery of hospital services for the community. All he knows about is the delivery of hospital services on philosophical lines. It is an ideology that is empty of any social conscience. It is well known that John James Memorial Hospital has not opened its full quota of approved private beds, and neither has Calvary Hospital. Much has been said about the demand for those beds, but there is no demand. Those beds would be open if that were the case. Instead, the Government winds back public hospital services to create an environment which will suit the establishment of a private hospital in the Territory.
I want to go to the Residents Rally plan on health in the ACT. First of all it said, when it misled the people of the ACT, that it would improve and build on Royal Canberra Hospital. That pretty soon fell by the wayside once its members decided to join the Liberals with whom they felt comfortable. And, of course, we ended up with a situation where, instead of pouring money into Royal Canberra Hospital, they joined with the Liberals to close it and fast track its closure in order to secure the goal which had been set by the conservative health Minister, that is, to reduce access to public beds in the ACT. Of course, the No Self Government Party's plan is difficult to uncover.
There have been bed cuts, and staff morale is down because of this Government's management of our hospital system. It is true that the Government is having difficulty in recruiting staff. No wonder. Who would want to work with this Government? The future is unclear. In the Estimates Committee proceedings we were told that, of a staff of approximately 4,000, Mr Humphries' department needs to advertise about 3,000 positions a year. I would suggest that that is pretty remarkable in anybody's book. No wonder morale is low. But then all you have to do is go and tell everybody that you are going to close the hospital. They run away in droves.
The greatest fib of all time was the national advertisement which told nurses who might seek employment in the ACT that they had a career in this wonderful Royal Canberra
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