Page 742 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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that last sitting week what the state of the health and hospital budget was and we were told on both occasions that everything was all right - "Don't you worry about it. I will get back to you if there is a problem". It was only on the Friday of that week, when officers of his department let the cat out of the bag, that the community became aware of the full magnitude of this crisis.
The health system is in a financial mess. Nobody knows by how much it is overrunning, to use a phrase that perhaps the Chief Minister finds more palatable than "blowing-out". The Government has now moved from one inquiry to another inquiry that it announced today, desperately trying to dodge the responsibility. The responsibility cannot be dodged. The responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the Minister whose seat is now vacant.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (4.15): I doubt whether in the history of the Westminster system of government there was ever a weaker or more pathetic case put forward by an opposition in attempting to censure a Minister. I listened to Mr Berry. All I heard was 15 minutes worth of Labor Party ideology. That is what it boiled down to. If ever the case was answered, Mr Humphries' rebuttal did it. It really did not need any more to conclude this debate because what Mr Humphries demonstrated - and in doing so he demonstrated his competence as a Minister - was that Mr Berry has double standards. What was all right for him when he was a Minister is not all right for Mr Humphries when he is a Minister.
Mr Berry stands condemned on the basis of his own words. During the first quarter of the fiscal year during which he was the Minister, his budget blew out. When we threw them out of government three months later, he had still done nothing to fix it; absolutely nothing. He had done nothing when we took government three months after that blow-out was discovered and made public. We took the matter and faced up to it, as we have done with a number of other matters that we inherited from that incompetent Labor Government. Not the least of the issues that we faced up to, and not the least of the issues that Mr Humphries has faced up to, is the health operation in this city.
Mr Berry talks about budgetary control. What was his solution to the health problem that he inherited? I accept that. What was his solution? His solution was to spend $216m more to resurrect a hospital that we did not need. That was his proposal. He never ever explained where the money was going to come from. He had no idea. Of course, the then Chief Minister put in a bid to the Commonwealth for $150m to get them off the hook, which they were never going to get anyway. Mr Berry never could explain where the $216m was going to come from, and he never explained why he was going to spend it on a hospital that we did not need and could not afford.
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