Page 763 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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MR SPEAKER: No, I do not believe that. Your point is overruled, Mr Berry. Please proceed, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Meikle continued:
Whilst continuation of over-spending at the same rate would result in a $10m deficit in operating expenses, there are several initiatives currently in place -
et cetera. This is an admission from Mr Berry's own chairman of the interim hospital board that there was a $2.5m blow-out in the first quarter of that financial year, and that it would have resulted in a $10m deficit, had no remedial action been taken. Mr Speaker, I stand by the statements made in that document.
Mr Moore: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Under standing order 213, I ask that the document that Mr Humphries is quoting from be ordered to be presented.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I am very happy to do that. I table that document and I also table the document that Mr Berry was previously quoting from. I present the following papers:
Budget difficulties in the health portfolio.
Copy of letter from the Acting Chairman, Interim Board of Directors, Royal Canberra and Woden Valley Hospitals to Mr W. Berry, MLA, Minister for Community Services and Health, dated 27 October 1989.
MR BERRY: I seek leave to make a personal explanation.
MR SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?
MR BERRY: Indeed I have been, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed.
MR BERRY: The document and matters which Mr Humphries referred to are clearly a deliberate distortion of the facts. He seeks to impugn me as a result. Mr Speaker, the Board of Directors letter which was leaked, as Mr Humphries will truly recall, was eventually proved inaccurate by Mr Kaine's own Treasury.
On close examination of the hospital budget, the Treasury itself discovered that the figures in the board reports which were leaked were inaccurate. Mr Humphries was advised - through Mr Kaine - of that fact in a later Treasury report. He was advised that the residual problem was $2.2m. He was also advised in that Treasury report of all of the measures which needed to be taken to fix the problem, which I have previously spoken about in my speech and I do not need to go into.
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