Page 5166 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Please make it brief, Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: It is a complex issue, Mr Speaker. The misinterpretation, of course, is one that I suppose the Chief Minister might complain about because he, in fact, does not seem to be able to interpret what privatisation is about; it is about expanding the private sector at the expense of the public sector. In his own words, he admitted - though later denied - that he was expanding the private hospital system at the expense of the public hospital system and that rate, to use the Minister's own words, is "up to 10 per cent". So I have not misled when I said that the Government was moving to privatise hospital services.
MR SPEAKER: I believe that has explained your position, Mr Berry.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister): Mr Speaker, I will take advantage of standing order 47 too because, once again, what Mr Berry just attributed to me is not what I said. I did not say that we were allowing the private sector to increase at the expense of the public sector; I said the very opposite. You said that I had misrepresented you and you were using my explanation to prove that. You are quite wrong again because I made it quite clear that the Government's intention is to allow the private sector to increase to provide for the needs of those who can afford it and remove them from the public hospital system to make it available for those who do need it. I said nothing whatsoever about reducing or contracting the size of the public health system - another case of misrepresenting my words. That is exactly the point that I was trying to make, Mr Speaker; he has demonstrated it once again.
MR MOORE: I rise under standing order 47, Mr Speaker. It is a very brief one. I refer to the notion that Mr Humphries put on to me about marginalisation of the public health services. He suggested that I did not understand, with reference to what would happen with the privately insuring people going off to private health facilities and a drop in the value of the public health system. In fact, what happens is that the private health sector runs the most profitable section of the health system and therefore, if that profitable health system were part of the public health system, it would, in fact, assist in keeping the public health system cheaper.
Debate interrupted.
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