Page 5171 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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MR BERRY: Mr Humphries asks: "Who was on our board?". He seems to have had a lapse in memory. He might recall that the events of December prevented us from implementing the consultative model which, of course, we had set out to do.
Mr Humphries: "Time beat us; time beat us." What party appointed the original board members?
MR BERRY: And Mr Humphries asks why we did not appoint the original board members. It is just as well we did not appoint the original board members, or he would have sacked them, as he did in the end anyway. So those are the facts. The fact of the matter is that we had made up our mind that that board process was inadequate and it was going to be replaced by a consultative model which would have involved a strong contingent of women, in accordance with Labor policy direction. We are not like the party opposite. They are an anti-women party and an anti-social justice party, as has been demonstrated so far in this debate on the Health Services Bill.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (11.44): Mr Speaker, we on this side of the chamber will not support this amendment either. It is another attempt by the Opposition to make some point in a vague and inconclusive fashion without really making a point at all. They do not seem to have the conviction to actually sit down and name the people or the categories of people they think should be on the board. But they want to have some vague acknowledgment of their former policy of having people from particular interest groups entrenched on the board.
I might indicate that there is a fundamental difference of philosophy in this matter, and the difference is that this Government believes that the board should represent the broad community. It should not be a series of individuals beholden to particular interest groups. It should not be a series of individuals whose position on the board depends on their membership of some other organisation. That is not the way in which we view this board. That makes members in those situations become dependent on the organisation to whom they owe their membership. In other words, their views are the views of that body. Their loyalty is to that body. They serve that body first of all, rather than the broad community of Canberra as health consumers, and that is not the philosophy of this Government.
This Government has not prescribed anybody who should sit on the board, with the exception, of course, of the chief executive of the public hospital system. That is appropriate. Those opposite say that we should have organisations represented - interest groups, pressure groups, vested interests - and I say no, that is not appropriate. I say that the better system is to provide, as the Government has done, for the best people for the job to be chosen, and that, I think, is the best basis on which to provide for the vast majority of situations.
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