Page 1020 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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MR HUMPHRIES: Ms Follett volunteers, "We will form a government". That is a very small part of the solution, indeed, Ms Follett; you have a lot further to go than that. I suggest that before you form any government you need to spell out to the people of the ACT how you are going to solve these problems. Those people opposite carp endlessly about how they are going to fix problems and what a bad job we are doing; but, in fact, they do not say just what solutions they propose. That will be a telling point, I think, in the coming election.
I will go over some of the points Ms Follett made. Estimates of savings since school closures I stand by. The Hudson report - which those opposite at various stages tried to denigrate, but which, in fact, was a very convincing document when it was finally released - indicated quite clearly that there were substantial savings to be made by a school consolidation program. It recommended that there be some withdrawal from some of the attempted savings; but, generally speaking, the $2.5m per annum in a full year was possible as a result of this Government's program. I am certainly not going to take responsibility for the actions of others as far as they relate to the incapacity of the Government to fully realise those savings in this financial year.
Ms Follett, together with her deputy, Mr Berry, continued to make insinuations about the capacity of the hospital redevelopment project to deliver the goods. But I emphasise the word "insinuations". Not one piece of evidence has been produced so far, in this place or outside it, to prove that there is actually some problem with the hospital redevelopment process - not one shred of evidence. Quite clearly they are relying once again on the tactic of simply repeating things often enough until people believe them. I suggest that they try the tactic of repeating often enough that the moon is blue because sooner or later some people will actually believe it. I think they do themselves a disservice in that process. It is in the interest of every Canberran that this process of hospital redevelopment go ahead. This program was contained in a report which Mr Berry received when he was in government and which clearly spelt out the imperatives in this area. Mr Berry, in fact, quite substantially accepted them - including the creation of a principal hospital at the Woden Valley site. That is an important part of the future capacity of this Territory to manage its resources, particularly in the area of health, into the coming decades. Without that project that will be impossible.
The Opposition continues to peddle the untruths that it has been pushing in recent days about supplementation in the hospital budget. They continue to pretend that supplementation is the same thing as a budget blow-out. They know that that is not true. Mr Berry has not for one instant attempted to justify his own supplementation of his own budget in 1989. It is also untrue to say, as Ms Follett has said, "I quote you about the budget problem
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