Page 5155 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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Since we have got to this situation and we are clearly going to push it through today, what the Government should do is reconsider this, look at what Mr Berry is suggesting, realise the good sense of it in providing additional parts to the Bill, in expanding the Bill and for making it better, and accept the amendment and run with it.
MR BERRY (10.54): This is a classic example of the Liberal Party again pretending that it is something that it really is not. This is the classic privatisation move by the Minister - on his own admission. In the debate over this issue one of the first things he talked about was whether or not research and advisory services would be necessary in a public hospital system. "I do not know", he said, "whether they would be necessary or not".
That is why there has been a deliberate decision made not to list the sorts of services which have been provided in the past to the people of the ACT, and that is why it can be clearly seen that this Government is following its slavish commitment to the Priorities Review Board report to rationalise services to the people of the ACT. The Chief Minister grimaces. No wonder! Of course, he pretends that he is an innocent party in this matter, but he is not. The fact of the matter is that what the Liberals - and the Residents Rally and those other members of the Government - are about is endorsing a piece of legislation which will allow the Government to withdraw services from the public hospital sector and from the people of the ACT. The Liberal Party is pretending that it is something it is not. It is a classic example of the Liberal Party's presentation of itself to the electorate.
Talk about political fantasies. Nobody is fooled by the Government opposite. Mr Humphries said that the lists that were put up by me in my amendment were proscriptive. I have to say, Mr Humphries, that you have got it wrong, because it is clearly not proscriptive. It says:
to include, without limiting such services:
(i) medical and hospital services;
(ii) diagnostic, therapeutic and rehabilitation services ...
Do you think those ones will - - -
Mr Humphries: Yes, but you must include those things; it is prescriptive.
MR BERRY: Of course, but it does not exclude any extra services. The fact of the matter is that this sets out to ensure that services are provided by the public hospital service in the ACT, and to prevent the Government from winding back the delivery of those public hospital services to the people of the ACT, particularly to the people that cannot afford to use the private sector services which this Government favours.
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