Page 4541 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (5.17): Mr Speaker - - -
Mr Duby: It is not worth replying to.
MR HUMPHRIES: It really is not, is it? But I think I had better reply, because Mr Berry said some really tawdry things. He has not been able to meet my challenge. I have challenged him, and he could not meet it. What services has the Government actually cut to achieve the losses that Mr Berry identified?
Mr Berry: Ambulances.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, we have not cut any ambulances. We have not taken any ambulances off the road. We have not cut any staff allocations. In fact, we have increased staff allocations in the Ambulance Service. Mr Berry wanders off because he cannot answer these questions. The fact of life is that he throws the allegations up and cannot answer these questions.
Likewise with regard to waiting lists: What is it that the Government has actually done, according to Mr Berry, to increase waiting lists in the Territory? What have we actually done? This is interesting: Mr Berry points to the figures in 1986-87 when there was a doctors dispute, and those figures were at their highest historically at that point in time. He usually glosses over that fact. But the fact is that that was when the waiting lists were at their highest. Mr Berry does not admit that that was the fault of the then Government, because, he says, that was the fault of the doctors - the doctors were to blame for the fact that there were high waiting lists in 1986 and 1987 during the doctors dispute. Yet he says that the fact that there are high waiting lists now res ipsa loquitur proves that we must have some Government policy which has caused that. It does not speak for itself; it does not follow - any more than the high waiting lists in 1986 or 1987 prove that the waiting lists were the fault of the Government. Mr Berry needs to produce evidence, and he has not done that. He has not, because he cannot.
Mr Berry made another inaccurate statement in his comments. He said that the waiting lists in all areas are up under this Government. That also is quite untrue. In a number of crucial areas, in fact, the waiting lists have gone down under this Alliance Government. For example, in September 1989, in the oral dental work area at Royal Canberra Hospital South the number of people on the waiting list was 65; it stood at 18 in September 1990. In neurosurgery the figures have dropped from 13 in 1989 to 7 in 1990 at Royal Canberra Hospital South. The ophthalmology figure has dropped from 128 under Mr Berry to 75 under me. These are quite big differences, and they are all due to, in some way or other, changed circumstances in the hospital. I would respectfully submit that these improvements demonstrate that the situation is not as cut and dried as Mr Berry puts
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