Page 1651 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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therefore the withdrawal of the original letter from the Chief Minister's in-tray. They are very sensitive about it. They do not like the Opposition members talking about cover-ups. Methinks they protesteth too much, Mr Speaker. The runs are on the board as far as the performance of this Minister is concerned. Mr Speaker, he will be out for a duck.
Next there was a long wait, and this is where the performance of the Chief Minister comes into focus. The Chief Minister sat on it for a while. We have a hospital system in crisis and the Chief Minister sits on it for a while. He then responded to the Minister for Health's requests and told him, "No, no, no. Your people cannot meet with mine, but I will agree to something entirely irrelevant; that is, we will have a look at Calvary Hospital". This was nothing to do with what was going on in Royal Canberra Hospital or Woden Valley Hospital, as they then were.
But now we come to the interesting point. After his response to the Minister, he said, "I would be pleased to receive your comments on this proposal". Were there ever any comments? I ask the question. It seems not. They certainly were not mentioned in the Enfield report. There was no comment at all; he was not interested. There is no evidence that any further action was taken as a result of that proposal.
It is allegedly all in the Enfield report. So who gets the chop? Mr Bissett gets the chop. It was convenient to do him in. The Minister was the culpable one and you needed a scapegoat to get him off the hook. Even Bernard Collaery had a bit of a swipe at the Minister when he made it clear that he did not want to get sick with the hospital system in the state that it is in because of the performance of this Minister.
I note that Minister Humphries had a bit of a swipe at Mr Collaery today on ABC radio and spat in his face, so to speak, over the future of the Residents Rally party. It will be interesting to see whether the Residents Rally party has some conscience about our hospital system, how it is being managed and how it is delivering services, and whether this Minister ought to be censured or not. The fact of the matter is that he ought to be censured, Mr Speaker, because of his poor performance.
What we have heard, Mr Speaker, is a lot of rhetoric. Mr Enfield does not say anything about the Minister's performance. I am not surprised, because he was hired by the Minister. He was not sent in there to give the Minister the dump. It was a political inquiry and, as the Canberra Times said, it should have been a full, open and public inquiry, not a behind closed doors inquiry as implemented by the Government.
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