Page 4416 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Qualified withdrawals are not normally acceptable, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I withdraw any suggestion coming out of the use of those words and say, quite simply, that Mr Berry's use of the word "blow-out" is totally inaccurate and not borne out by the facts. I challenge him to come into this place and prove that a single cent has blown out in the hospital redevelopment budget.
Mr Berry: It has.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry makes that assertion but cannot prove it, as usual. What is the Government doing about waiting lists? The Government is concerned about waiting lists. Mr Berry says in his press release - again another untruth - that there has been an explosion of waiting time. In the last 12 months there has not been any increase at all in waiting time in our hospitals. It stands at two to four months. It has stood at two to four months for quite some time and it has not changed. Mr Berry confuses length of waiting lists with waiting time on that waiting list, and it is quite untrue to say that is the case.
Mr Berry also seems to put out the impression, quite freely taken up, that all the people on these waiting lists are people in pain and in need of immediate surgery. That is also untrue. The fact of life is that our waiting lists consist of some people who have already had their surgery elsewhere but have not been removed from the list; people who are not fit for surgery for various reasons; people who have moved away from the ACT and do not require that surgery any longer or do not require it from this ACT public hospital system; or people who are not in present need of the service, for example, people who have booked themselves in for surgery in two months time, during the Christmas holidays. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have had interjections throughout my remarks and I urge your protection.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please! Let us hear the Minister.
MR HUMPHRIES: Such people are notionally on the waiting list, but the activities of a hospital booking service liaison committee would certainly allow the hospital system to have a better understanding of the nature of that waiting list and to get a better idea of how get that waiting list shortened and provide people with more ready access to surgery time.
This Government is taking other steps on that problem: there will be a 10 per cent increase in operating theatre time over this coming Christmas period - a 10 per cent increase on the last Christmas period. That will have a significant impact on what is always a difficult time of the year. This Government has had success in recent months
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