Page 4419 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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was the peacemaker and kept you together so that you closed down only four schools. One hospital does not really matter.
Good health needs promotion to ensure that all members of the community enjoy a better, fuller life through using our community health centres. We are going to lose those. Removing those services will mean that the long-term focus will be on the cure, not the prevention of illnesses, yet it is more important to prevent the illnesses before we end up in hospital. This, along with the long waiting list for public hospital beds, will mean that people in Canberra will have to suffer unnecessarily because of the Government's policies. The doctors in Canberra have only just woken up to what is happening to them. We tried to tell them. Of course, they were all out working for the Liberal Party on election day and now when they talk to me - - -
Mr Humphries: They will be next time, too.
MRS GRASSBY: When they talk to me now about the hospital crisis, I say, "It serves you right. You backed the wrong horse this time, you really did. It ran last, and that is you". Yes, when they find out that their bread and butter in the public wards is not going to be available because of the long, long waiting lists, because they will all be in private hospitals, then I will say to them, "It serves you right. You backed the wrong horse". Backing Mr Humphries is definitely backing the wrong horse. Unfortunately, who is going to suffer from this? The people in Canberra will suffer.
As for building private hospitals, they could not fill the beds in the private hospital of Calvary. Nor could they do it at John James Hospital. So, why we are building more, I will never know. There were beds closed down at Calvary; there were wards closed down at Calvary. Private wards were closed down, right? In that case, why are we building more private hospitals?
We are demolishing a wonderful health system. We are changing Canberra, and the people do not like it. They did not vote us in here to change Canberra, and you are changing Canberra. The Minister with the slick mouth and the slick feet thinks that he can get away with it. I can tell you, Mr Humphries: you might have the numbers in the Liberal Party to get back here; but, believe you me, you will be on the opposition benches. You will not be in the Government. I suggest that you get used to that one.
Not only have we problems with our health centres but our ambulance services are in a dangerous state. We heard Mr Berry give us figures on the fact that we had ambulance rosters which show that there will be one station closed at least until 26 November. It took the Minister months to get an extra crew to get trained. The fact is that, if you have a road accident anywhere in Canberra, God help you if
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