Page 231 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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insure are forced to pay for an ambulance service - an ambulance service which should have four ambulance stations open 24 hours a day. We are not getting what we pay for; neither is the rest of the community. They have the right to expect that their money is spent on the fulfilment of the promises that have been made by this Government, and they have a right to a proper ambulance service.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.27): Mr Speaker, a person wandering into this chamber and hearing what Mr Berry has said and what Mr Wood was saying this morning, might well imagine that he or she had somehow fallen into a time warp and had wandered back through to November 1990.
Mr Berry: Get to the facts; drop the personal attacks.
MR HUMPHRIES: This is a new tactic by the Opposition; they are using facts now. This will be a change. I was sitting in the lavatory on the ground floor here, and I often enjoy doing that when Mr Berry is speaking because it somehow makes it easier to move the bowels.
Mr Berry: That would probably fall into the category of unparliamentary, would it not?
MR SPEAKER: I think it probably is, Mr Berry.
MR HUMPHRIES: I will withdraw any connection between my bowels and Mr Berry, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Anybody who had been sitting listening to any of these debates would imagine, without any hesitation, that they had somehow slipped back in time and were listening to debates that were happening here six, four or three months ago; because we have heard all of this before ad nauseam and I really wonder why it is that we have to go through the charade of again going through all this kind of business.
I think it is extremely regrettable that Mr Berry again seeks to make political capital out of this matter by distortions and statements which mislead people about the effectiveness of our Ambulance Service. I have to repeat the concern I expressed last year that Mr Berry's making claims of that kind, repeatedly and in many cases - not invariably, but in many cases - without foundation, does alarm people about the effectiveness of the ambulance system to deal - - -
Mr Berry: Which occasions were without foundation?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I think I heard Mr Berry in relative silence. I would ask for a little bit of protection in this case against his interventions.
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