Page 4413 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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to the business of actually pretending to sack them or threatening to sack them. This Government has established a stronger board as a result of its coming into office.
On another day, Thursday, 9 November, the Canberra Times said, "Berry on hospitals: diagnosis aboulia". It said:
The ACT Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, is showing every sign that he lacks the experience and the guts to handle the crisis in the ACT health system. He simply will not make the hard decisions. And when the unpalatable options are put before him, he runs away from them, thinking that the crisis will go away.
Contrast that editorial with the one in today's Canberra Times. Have a good look at that. I am not going to quote that, but have a good look at that editorial and see what it says about the need to improve the quality of health services in the ACT. I concur with the view of the Canberra Times when it says, in terms of acting on the crisis facing the hospital system:
If he has not got the guts to put a higher interest - the people of Canberra - before them -
that is his industrial trade union masters -
he should resign, and he should do it quickly before the damage that his irresolution is causing becomes too great.
He did not have to resign; the Assembly of this Territory sacked him, and thank goodness it did.
Mr Berry: That was when the waiting lists were low. Have a look at the waiting lists now. You cannot get services in the hospitals under Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: I know that you are embarrassed, Mr Berry. I know that you are embarrassed by these revelations and I know that you are finding this all very awkward because you had all those problems and you were not able to face up to them as this Government is facing up to them. The steps taken by this Government to improve the public hospital system are necessary, in fact, urgently necessary, to achieve a higher quality of health care for the people of Canberra.
The Kearney report - the report on which Mr Berry himself supposedly based his decisions about changes in the public hospital system - said that the only way to enhance the quality of health care in Canberra was to establish a principal hospital. Mr Berry accepted that much. But it also said that to do that you need to concentrate facilities and resources on the principal hospital site. Mr Berry could not go that far. He could not cut the strings with a full Royal Canberra Hospital; he could not
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