Page 747 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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It is interesting that you should raise the matter of the interim hospital board that Mr Berry proposed to sack because, of course, that is exactly what you then went and did. The point is that you have had the knowledge, you have had the time, you have had the opportunity; and, in spite of all that, you have failed to manage. In his speech, the Chief Minister said that you have gone about the restructuring of the hospital system. He said that Wayne Berry was going to restructure the hospital system and retain Royal Canberra Hospital, and that it was going to cost $216m. Correct. Then he went on to say, "Well, where was the $216m coming from?".
What, of course, has happened instead is that we have an Alliance proposal to cut out Royal Canberra Hospital; to make one less public hospital in Canberra, supposedly at the cost of $154m to start off with. That appears to have now gone to $166m. That leaves about a $15m difference. That is before we start - - -
Mr Humphries: That is dishonest. That is inflation.
MR MOORE: That is taken into account. We are still talking about the figure of $216m for Mr Berry; it is the one the Chief Minister used. That is before we take into account the announcement you made today about the uses of the Acton Peninsula, and the question about how much that is going to cost. That has not come into this part of the budget. So, there is another factor we have to take into account. The other thing that it fails to take into account, and which is even more critical, is that what you are hoping to do is to increase the number of private patients, as you have said on many occasions - - -
Mr Humphries: And public patients.
MR MOORE: And public patients - by creating more private hospitals. What we get is a situation there where we have more private patients in private hospitals - - -
Mr Humphries: There are to be no more private hospitals. That is not true.
MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects that there are going to be no more private hospitals. We wonder about the one on the shores of Lake Ginninderra. We wonder about the number of beds. The point that I am making is that when those private patients are in private hospitals the profit goes to the entrepreneurs. When those private patients are in public hospitals, that same profit - - -
Mr Humphries: What profit? There is no profit in private patients in public hospitals.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Humphries!
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