Page 4424 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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Party. Mr Collaery was on television the other night saying, "We will not lose office over this single issue", yet again they were prepared to put office before principle, and expediency before genuinely sticking to an election platform.
Throughout this afternoon's debate we have heard the continual rhetoric from the Liberal Party, the small shopkeeper mentality, the idea, "We have to save our pennies on the hospital system, we are prudent managers and what the people in Canberra want is less taxes. They are subsidising the public sector and everyone would much prefer private hospitals". That shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how public facilities are to be provided. It is the old complaint and criticism of Australia in the 1950s - private affluence and public squalor. That is the situation we are likely to return to.
It is clear that there is not a demand from the population of Canberra for more private hospitals. Mr Humphries' claims that more private hospitals are needed were effectively refuted in a recent article in the Canberra Times, where the administrators of the existing hospitals in Canberra which provide private beds indicated that there is a significant oversupply. The demand for existing private hospital facilities is not taking up the existing beds. The people of Canberra do not want more private beds. They want the retention of the existing public hospital system.
Mr Humphries has also maintained throughout this debate and particularly at the Estimates Committee hearings that the medical profession in this town is in favour of the fast tracking of the Royal Canberra Hospital closure and the shutdown of the hospital.
Mr Berry: Most of them.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Berry reminds me that it is "most of them". I think Mr Humphries' precise words to the Estimates Committee were, "There are a few malcontents, a few discontents, but most of the doctors are in favour of it". Since he uttered those statements, I see repeated reports in the Canberra Times of doctors opposing the proposal. It is not just your GP down the street that is coming forward and opposing this; doctors that I have seen reported in the Canberra Times are the heads of the units in Royal Canberra Hospital. These are the people who are coming out now and attacking this health Minister with his manic determination to fast track the shutting down of Royal Canberra Hospital.
He says that we cannot point to failures in his administration. You virtually only have to look at the Canberra Times any day of the week to see yet another story of a disaster in the health administration. Recently I saw that an elderly woman was sent home from the hospital in her slippers at 3 o'clock in the morning because there were no beds available because they are shutting wards down at
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