Page 4532 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Mr Humphries: Why are they asking to build more then?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Humphries, please!
MR BERRY: They do not open the ones they have got. The only way that they will open more private beds in this Territory is if this Government guarantees them that they will create a market for them. And they will do it. They will create the market because they will cut the public hospital system back further and create longer waiting lists and more pain and suffering in the community.
Mr Humphries: Where is your evidence?
MR BERRY: The evidence is here. You handed it out the other day. The waiting lists are growing longer. That is the evidence.
Mr Humphries: That is to do with other factors.
MR BERRY: That is about cutting back services.
Mr Kaine: Rubbish!
MR BERRY: You cannot cover the facts, Chief Minister Kaine. The fact of the matter is that you are cutting back services, and that is why you have waiting lists. If you were not cutting back services the waiting lists would be much lower; in fact, they would be more like the levels which existed when I was the Minister.
Mr Connolly: The Berry waiting lists.
MR BERRY: Yes, that is right, the famous Berry waiting lists. The fact of the matter is that you are cutting back services to save money and people are suffering because of it. Those are the facts, and you cannot deny them. You cannot hide from those facts. The people in the community are awake to you. You cannot cover that up any longer. Those waiting lists are clearly because of cost cutting and the saving of money by the reduction of services in our hospital system.
The Minister will complain that it is because he cannot recruit nurses - and I will come to that a bit later - and there are staffing problems and all sorts of things. Of course, these were never discussed in the Estimates Committee, but the real reasons for the ACT's higher rates of private insurance include the higher than average income that everybody talks about and the long waiting lists which have emerged because of past industrial disputes and which have caused some concern in the hospital system. I refer here to the major dispute in 1986 and, of course, people continue to insure because of their fear arising from the massive waiting lists that were created by that industrial dispute. Another reason is the low number of salaried medical officers in the ACT public hospital system. Those
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