Page 733 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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There was no crisis then. The Government did not deserve to be sacked for those misleading statements by the Minister. What has happened is that there is a crisis now. The Minister has had 15 months to do something about it and he has done nothing, even though he knew about the problems in the hospital system. Mr Speaker, this Minister must be sacked.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.51): I rise both to answer Mr Berry's comments and to move an amendment of my own which is about to be circulated. I indicate at this stage that I will be deleting the words in paragraph (8) because Mr Berry obviously chickened out on his original decision to broaden this matter into education as well. He obviously did not have the ammunition in that area to make anything of it. Obviously, that has petered out on the part of the Opposition. We will be removing the words in paragraph (8), and also some words in the first and last paragraphs of that amendment. I ask that that amendment be circulated now so that I can speak to both of those matters.
I am a bit disappointed and angry at the moment because I spent large parts of my morning preparing for a major attack by the Opposition on the question of performance of health and education budgets. Instead, there was a rather limp, tired old tirade from Mr Berry of the kind that we have heard many, many times over the last few months. I must say that it was rather like the reported stirring Iraqi defence of Kuwait - nothing much materialised when the actual gunfire started.
There is nothing new in what we have heard today. They are the same old arguments that the Opposition have been pushing since the very day they went into opposition. It is obvious that Mr Berry, in particular, is still smarting about the fact that he left government under a cloud and that he faced, in his own time, a disastrous budget problem. He is desperately trying to expiate the guilt of those circumstances by now attacking me for the same crimes which he defended himself against in 1989. I have to say that he will do so with the same lack of success as he had in 1989.
Mr Berry has referred at length to the inherited problems of government in respect of the health budget. I would be the first one to concede that there are inherited problems, and the first one to acknowledge that action is required. I am, of course, the Minister who has actually commenced some action of a real kind in that regard. That stands in stark contrast to the handling of the health budget under Mr Berry.
I want to go through some of the arguments Mr Berry has used to support this rather extraordinary censure motion. He has alleged that I have known about this problem for the last 15 months; that I should have done something about it; that I should have fixed it; and that I should resign. Of
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