Page 4535 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. It is just bizarre. People in the ACT cannot get a number of services in private hospitals because we have not provided for those private hospitals; we have not authorised those private hospital services. By providing such services, people who have the insurance to pay for such things will, presumably, want to use them. The fact is that the ACT has a level of private bed usage that is considerably less than the national average, and that additional pressure on the public hospital system costs money. It costs the taxpayer money and it reduces the quality of care that we can offer in the public hospital system because of the pressure of numbers. It makes sense to relieve that, and the proof of that fact is that the Commonwealth Government has put in place policies to encourage State and Territory governments to increase the number of private hospital beds. We are responding - - -
Mr Berry: What are they?
MR HUMPHRIES: The Medicare agreement is one such thing, Mr Berry. There is the Medicare agreement. The Commonwealth Government puts those mechanisms in place to encourage governments to put in place more private hospital beds, and that is one of the things this Government is doing.
Let us come back to this often repeated assertion, which Mr Berry undoubtedly hopes will become true merely because of being repeated so many times, that the Government is cutting back services. It is so frequently asserted that Mr Berry hopes it will gain currency. The fact is that you can prove or disprove this proposition, and as yet, in all the debates we have held in this place, Mr Berry has not actually proved or even suggested what it is that the Government is actually doing to produce a lower level of service. He has not actually said what specific service or services are being cut to achieve a lower level of service.
Mr Kaine: And neither can he.
MR HUMPHRIES: And neither can he. What exactly is it that we have cut? Mr Berry can speak again in this debate. Can you tell us what it is that we have actually cut? Proving that there is a waiting list does not prove anything, Mr Berry. The facts that we have not recruited enough nurses into the system, as that waiting list proves, and that we have not sufficient workers, particularly nurses, in the public hospital system do not, of themselves, prove that the Government has cut back on the amount of money available for nurses, because if you look at the budget, in particular the budget for expenditure on nursing and nursing services and staff services generally in the hospitals, you will see that there is no loss of clinical services in that process.
We are not taking any people away from any wards. We are not reducing the proportion of service providers to patients in the hospital system. If that is the case, if
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