Page 5154 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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being just that hospitals board that we have been used to - with the money being spent on the hospitals and an emphasis being on the restructuring of the hospitals - to what the board ought to be about, namely, a much greater overview of health. That is the advantage of a health board over a hospitals board.
The notion that it takes in dental services, for example, would go beyond most people's immediate reaction of dealing with health. A number of times in this house we have had discussions on fluoride, and that issue becomes a health issue. I realise that that issue is likely to be resolved in this house; however, it is good to use it to illustrate the sorts of issues that a health board ought to be aware of. This is emphasised again by part (v) of Mr Berry's amendment, which draws attention to public health.
This amendment was tabled yesterday; so there was plenty of time for the Government to look at this, see the sense in it and react positively to it. There is still enough time for the Government to realise that this does no harm whatsoever - it does not take away from the Bill - but in fact adds an element to it, an element of making it easy to understand for the layperson, not for the lawyer. I think that is a very important element.
We have a situation where the health department realised that, at the Minister's behest, there was going to have to be a health board and it was going to require legislation. Instead of taking the time to prepare it, to work out what was going to happen, to table draft legislation to allow us to sort out exactly what the nature of the health board would be, this Bill was put together quickly - the drafting instructions were drawn up very rapidly and then the legal office had to draft it quickly.
I have no difficulty with the actual drafting of the Bill, but clearly the drafting instructions have all been done in a rush-it-through manner for something that did not require such speed and such rushing through; it was just that Mr Humphries obviously felt that it was important to get it done, to start looking good on health matters and to try to be seen to be doing something positive. He could have announced that the board would be established early next year, after the legislation, which would have been a far more effective way to deal with this. But, no; instead, this Government is trying to push through something that is not really ready.
That is best illustrated, of course, by their own amendments - where there has been a bit of pressure at the last minute from the AMA and so they decide that perhaps they had better bend to that pressure without further discussion. So we have a situation where the Government is illustrating its incompetence in dealing with this.
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