Page 5260 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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you will come back in a much better mood than the one that you have been exhibiting in the last few days. You have been tetchy, Chief Minister, and I think you need this holiday. Canberra might need to get rid of you for a while, but I think you need the holiday more than Canberra needs to get rid of you.
Mr Kaine: I have to get away from your boring and tedious debates.
MR BERRY: Well, they work; that is the main thing. The fact of the matter is, and I know that this has been said, that the Minister is setting out to pull the teeth from this legislation. He started out bravely and the legislation found its way into the Bill. I know that his bureaucrats would be concerned about the absence of any requirement for doctors to participate in those quality assurance programs, but what intrigues me most about the Minister's position is that, not only is he going to withdraw the clauses which require the doctors to participate in those quality assurance programs, but he is even going to withdraw the appeal provisions.
What he is saying is that those provisions are inadequate because they force people to do something, and he is going to be very tolerant of the medical profession all of a sudden because it will not participate to provide the services that the public demands. He has even shot himself in the foot by not mentioning the appeal provisions which allow for the doctors to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in a case where they think they have been unfairly treated. There is plenty of ambit within this legislation to allow the doctors appeal rights and so on.
I do not know why the Minister is doing this. I think he has been snowed. I think perhaps we ought to think about history in the world. The reason that there are services provided by governments throughout the world - not only in this country but in the world - is that the private sector has failed to provide them. Private enterprise has never rushed forward to provide required public services. It just does not rush forward to do that, particularly the unprofitable ones. That is why there has to be regulation to require people to deliver services at a standard which is in the public interest.
Mr Humphries: Yes. The old Stalinist trick.
MR BERRY: I hear Mr Humphries muttering about the old Stalinist trick. That has nothing to do with it; that is as bad as Bernard Collaery's mystical trips to Moscow and so on.
Mr Kaine: Tovarishch.
MR BERRY: When you have earnt the right to address me like that, Chief Minister, I would be happy to accept it; but you have a long way to go.
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