Page 4417 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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in recruiting additional staff to the ACT public hospital system. That will have a very important impact because obviously Mr Berry has failed to realise that the availability of staff to deal with these important problems is crucial to overcoming the waiting list problem.
There is a problem with recruiting qualified nurses across this country; Mr Berry does not seem to be aware of that. It is complicated by changes in the arrangements in this country for training nurses and doctors. This will have a very serious impact on all public hospital systems in this country. However, we are having some success, generated, no doubt, by the fact that we are evincing an intention to update and improve the general environment of our public hospital system in the ACT. Two anaesthetists have been recruited in the last two months; three more are shortly to be recruited. That represents a 40 per cent increase in anaesthetists in our public hospital system; it makes a big dent in our capacity to deal with waiting times.
There has also been a substantial improvement in medical management, with appointments to a number of positions in the last few months. All those things add up to a record of action and dedication in the area of public hospital services in the ACT which Mr Berry - the critic of the Government in this matter - simply cannot match. His record in this area simply does not stand up to the record of achievement of this Government, and I would urge people to understand that his attempts to generate panic and fear about the public hospital system in the ACT are nothing more than political point scoring.
MRS GRASSBY (3.34): First of all, I would like to congratulate the Chief Minister on choosing Mr Humphries as his Minister for Health. He is not only slick with his feet but also slick with his mouth and he has been very slick to say that - - -
Mr Kaine: He is a good Minister too.
MRS GRASSBY: Yes, of course. The way we are going, it is not going to be cents over budget, it is going to be millions over budget, and the people of Canberra are going to suffer. We are changing Canberra, which is a thing that people do not want. We have a crisis all right, a crisis in the health system. We did not have that under Mr Berry. We did not have waiting lists as long as this.
Not only are they attacking our public hospital system, they are also undermining the backbone of our community health systems - the most important part - by closing down community health centres all over Canberra. In a community which is ageing - and I look at the Chief Minister over there, ageing fast - we will need community health facilities to help our aged. I think you should realise, Chief Minister, that this is the man who is putting you in that category where you may not have any health centres. I hope that you have very good private insurance. Do not
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