Page 4412 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: Shoddy indeed, but I will come back to that in a moment. He trots out these sleazy arguments that are based more on his own ideological starting point than on the facts as they actually appear.
Mr Duby: "Trots" is the appropriate word.
MR HUMPHRIES: Do you mean that he has the trots, or that he started with a trots perspective?
Mr Duby: No, I think it is the trots perspective.
MR HUMPHRIES: All right, I will take Mr Duby's word for that.
Mr Connolly: Just keep chatting amongst yourselves over there.
MR HUMPHRIES: As you are over there, no doubt. The fact of life is that Mr Berry started with a certain mind-set. He said to himself that this is a Liberal Government. This is what he seems to think: "This is a Liberal Government. How is it going to approach the issue of health care? Of course, it is going to privatise. It is going to destroy public facilities". It is going to do all those things that, in Mr Berry's fantasy world, conservative governments always do. Where is the evidence of this? Mr Berry has been running around town touting the fact that this Government is privatising services. Can he name, or can anybody else in this room name, a single service this Government has privatised? Silence. Silence from that side of the chamber. Silence across the chamber. They cannot name a single service this Government has privatised, because there are not any such services. You come with a preconception that it is going to happen, and you are disappointed and bewildered when it does not actually happen.
The fact of life is that this Government is acting in a responsible manner to deal with the long-term problems facing our public hospital system. Mr Berry, above anybody else in this chamber apart from me, ought to be aware of the enormous nature of those problems, because Mr Berry sat in the chair of the Minister for Health for seven months. He saw those problems and he twiddled his thumbs while he was there. He could not make a decision.
Let us take a trip down memory lane. These are some of the headlines from the days when Mr Berry was Minister for Health: "Government acts to shore up Berry"; "Mr Berry's crumbling administration of the public hospital system" - giving rise, I think, on that particular occasion to the $7m cost blow-out in the public hospital system; and "Hospital board faces dismissal". Mr Berry's own hospital board administering his public hospital system did not have the faith in him to stick around, and he had to get around
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