Page 5120 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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Labor Opposition will be moving to strengthen the board of management with service providers, consumer organisations and trade unions. That is because the Government has not seen fit to do anything about a consultative structure underneath the Minister to keep him on the straight and narrow in terms of what the community wants. Through the policy making procedures of the Liberal Party it is difficult to work out how he would ever get information on what the community wants through that process, so it is absolutely necessary that the process that is put in place in the hospital legislation provides for that in some way. That is not the preferred method from the Labor Party's point of view. We would prefer those people to be advising the Minister directly.
It is also evident from other amendments that have been placed before the chamber that the Government seems to have folded on the establishment of provisions to ensure that there is quality control in the delivery of services in our hospital system. I do not know the full reasons why it has folded. On one day there were provisions within the legislation to ensure that the board would be able to require consultants within the system to participate in quality assurance measures. After a reported kerfuffle with the Australian Medical Association, that requirement has now been deleted. That strikes me as odd, because this Government was one which complained bitterly about the lack of quality assurance in the medical system. It knows, for example, that Woden Valley Hospital was not able to receive accreditation because of the lack of adequate quality assurance; yet here it is in its own legislation scrubbing it out because of some perceived pressure from outside Government ranks.
I must say that we have not had any complaints about that in the Opposition offices, but I will go back to the issue of consultation. There have been no perceived processes put in place to consult fully on the provisions which are to be included in this legislation. There are none at all that we are aware of. They certainly were not put to the Labor Opposition, and I have to say that the - - -
Mr Humphries: Nor were your amendments before today.
MR BERRY: The Minister complains, "Nor were your amendments before today". I was going to say, Mr Speaker, that it is just as well that they did not try their style of consultation on us because we would not have a bar of it. We have seen it work before; the people in the schools have seen how it works before. We do not want that sort of consultation and we will not participate in it because we will not waste our valuable time on that rort.
Mr Speaker, it is also important that the legislation provide for a health services complaints unit. If you have the time to read the telephone book, and I accept that not many people in this place do, if you look under the Department of Community Services and Health and you search
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