Page 2660 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR HUMPHRIES: In deference to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw that statement. Mr Berry has announced a number of things today. He is going to close Royal Canberra Hospital North; he is going to proceed with the redevelopment of Royal Canberra Hospital South as a principal hospital; he is going to expand Calvary Hospital to 300 beds; and he is going to maintain and establish certain health facilities on the Acton Peninsula site. If that sounds familiar to members of the Assembly, of course, it is very familiar. It is in fact the policy of the Alliance Government, slightly rejigged.
Mr Berry: No, it is not.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry may disagree, but everybody out there in the community knows full well that he has cosmetically changed the Alliance Government's plans in order to make them look as though he has responded in some way to the litany of complaints he made while he was in opposition. The fact of life is that he has not. He has not changed those plans significantly and, as far as the public hospital component is concerned, the changes are so minute as to be indistinguishable from the Alliance Government's own plans.
The fact of life is that, in coming to that position, Mr Berry has wasted some $50,000 in commissioning the study he has just tabled and two months in a time-critical process, merely to establish in the eyes of the world that the Alliance Government was right. That is a disgraceful performance by any government.
I could have told Mr Berry two months ago that the hospital redevelopment as planned by us ought to have proceeded. Everybody who looked at that process knew that that was the case. The people in Mr Berry's department, the people who conducted the inquiry he has just tabled - everybody knew that. Even Mr Berry knew that. But he had to go through this charade of having a public inquiry, and we are now $50,000 poorer as a result.
I think that performance is quite disgraceful, and those in the community who have relied on the Labor Party for this information, who have relied on the Labor Party for some change in plan in the hospital redevelopment, would have been sorely disappointed. There are people in this community - and I see some of them in the public gallery here today - who strongly expected that Labor would do what it said, that is, reopen Royal Canberra Hospital North. That is what they expected. That is what the Residents Rally, to some extent, thought the Government would seriously consider doing when it supported them on 6 June this year. Both groups were forlornly mistaken. Labor has made no attempt to do that.
The report they have commissioned and tabled today is pure cosmetic presentation in order to deceive people into thinking that Labor has different plans from the Alliance Government in that regard.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .