Page 4536 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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we are not actually cutting back the amount of money we spend on nurses or doctors or other health professionals, how can it be that the Government's policy is preventing nurses from being recruited? Clearly there are other reasons why nurses cannot be recruited and they are more to do, I would suggest, with the fact that there is a very serious shortage of nurses throughout this country at the present point in time. There is a very serious shortage of nurses.
Mr Duby: Nationally.
MR HUMPHRIES: Nationally. Every hospital system, in every State and Territory in this country, is facing the same problem. Mr Berry loves to think that that is a problem particular to the ACT. It is not.
What other services is the Government cutting back to produce this shortfall, this reduction in quality? I invite Mr Berry to indicate what they are and not just to say, "You are closing hospitals or you are closing wards or whatever". What are we actually denying to patients in our hospital system? What could they get under Mr Berry which they cannot get today? That is the question. I invite him to answer that question.
MR STEVENSON (5.04): There are stresses on our hospital system and, of course, they are brought about by not having enough money to pay for the system. A short while ago the Chief Minister mentioned something about Mr Connolly and me having some sort of similar technique, what he called "linear technique".
Mr Kaine: I am sorry I said that, Dennis.
MR STEVENSON: You have upset both of us. I wondered what exactly a "linear technique" was. I know that there are a lot of terms that accountants or economists use - - -
Mr Kaine: I said "a linear relationship".
MR STEVENSON: A linear relationship. I wondered whether it was something to do with a linear differential equation which is "an equation of the first degree formed by equating to zero an expression understood to be a linear function of the dependent variable and its derivatives". So, he did say something about what I said.
I thought that for the record perhaps I should very briefly put the basics of what I say, which concerns why we have a money problem. It is simply a matter of resources, right? It is like hospitals. Australia has abundant resources in food, crops and livestock. We have abundant energy and energy potential. We have an absolutely marvellous industrial capacity, huge resources in building materials, manpower, enterprise. In fact, we have land, climate and everything we need. We simply lack one thing in this country, and it is something - - -
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