Page 737 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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advice that he might have followed in opposition; but, of course, he has not. All in all, he behaved in a thoroughly panic-struck way in the face of this crisis. I have to say one thing: To accept advice from Mr Wayne Berry on the management of hospital budget blow-outs is just ludicrous. Fancy him lecturing anybody about how to manage health budgets. It is quite extraordinary.
I have already indicated what hypocrisy the Labor Party had in this matter. It is fairly clear that their actions in this matter do not accord with their words now. I think those opposite should realise that tactics of this kind are only designed to evade the real issues of responsible management of our health system. The ACT does face problems - very severe problems. They are problems which, in fact, Mrs Grassby put her finger on when she was speaking in the Assembly during the same debate on 15 November. Mrs Grassby said:
We have inherited a run-down, out-of-date hospital, that should have been pulled down.
In the same speech, she said:
As I said, we have inherited a run-down, badly built hospital. Anybody else would have said, "That's it. Let's put the bulldozer through it".
Speaking figuratively only, that is what we have decided to do - not put a bulldozer through it, but certainly decommission it as a hospital. That is the same action which Mr Berry has consistently attacked since day one of this Government. It is the same action for which he now stands condemned, because the implication of that kind of response to this problem is that budget problems will continue to be a serious matter in the ACT context. It is only through a long-term financial management strategy of the kind that this Government has adopted that you can actually get to the bottom of controlling health expenditure in the ACT.
There is no justification for a three-public-hospital system in the ACT. The Kearney report made that abundantly clear. Mr Berry chose, for political reasons, to reject that recommendation and to retain, for purely cosmetic reasons, the additional cost entailed in having a third public hospital in the ACT, namely, the Royal Canberra Hospital North. He suffered the consequence of his inability to plan for the future, and that was that he was thrown out of office.
There is not really much more I can say on this matter. Mr Berry has failed to deliver anything in the way of real fire against the Government. I have circulated an
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