Page 2431 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
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I present the following paper:
Hospitals Redevelopment Project - Acton Community Hospital Feasibility Study - Ministerial statement, 6 August 1991.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.57): Mr Speaker, I have to say that I find this statement pathetically weak and inappropriate in the present circumstances that the ACT public hospital system finds itself in. Mr Kaine described it as a statement you have when you are not having a statement, and that was dead accurate. It is. I asked Mr Berry in question time today whether the report was available - in fact, I assumed that it was, based on the information that has come to me - and I said, "Will he be prepared to table it straightaway in this Assembly for the benefit of members of the Assembly and of the public of the ACT?".
Mr Wood: Just as you would have done!
MR HUMPHRIES: Just as I would have done. Mr Berry, first of all, has not told the public of the ACT, unlike anything I ever did in government, that he had the report in the first place. He has kept that secret. Do not shake your head, Mr Berry; you have told nobody about it, except presumably your colleagues. There has been no attempt to reveal the existence of that document. There has been no attempt to table that document or to give any indication of the contents of that document.
This is particularly reprehensible, given the critical stage the hospital redevelopment of this Territory is now in. We have reached a vital pass in that redevelopment. Already for some time the renal unit's transfer has been held up because of the Government's prevarication. We now have other critical moves to take place very shortly, particularly in relation to Calvary Hospital's operation, which have been held up for some time, which now ought to proceed, and which cannot proceed while the Government continues to sit on this report and keep it secret.
What happened, Mr Speaker, to open and consultative government? If this is an options paper - things the Government might be able to do if it is of a mind to do so - why cannot we see it now? We are going to see it presumably when it is tabled. Why cannot we see it now? Presumably, Mr Speaker, the desire of the Government to provide the Opposition and others in the Assembly, and in the public, with information extends only as far as it is in the Government's interest to do so. If we are going to see this in the future, it makes a mockery of the claim that this is an open and consultative government. I have had no consultation with the present Government on any substantive issue since it came to power, and I think that
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