Page 2663 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
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otherwise have been the case, less costly options for hospital and health care. In other words, by consolidating facilities on, say, the principal hospital site more quickly, you get the savings produced by that process more quickly. The $8.5m saving referred to by the Kearney steering committee in 1989 would come on track more quickly with fast-tracking. I see no reason why that should not continue to be the case under this Government. In fact, I would expect a very large element of fast-tracking to continue.
Mr Berry has indicated, I understand, that he proposes to close Royal Canberra Hospital North by Christmas of this year - - -
Mr Kaine: That sounds familiar.
MR HUMPHRIES: It does sound familiar. It is very familiar because it is our plan, and that was a plan that was produced under fast-tracking. How is it that we are abandoning fast-tracking but are still able to close the hospital by that time? Mr Berry continues to trot out this old furphy that in some way the previous Government miscosted its items; it got the figures wrong, it covered up particular items of its proposals, and it presented a false picture to the people of the ACT. He knows that that is untrue.
Mr Berry knows that the very same proposals he is now presenting as icing on the cake, if you like - the rehabilitation and aged care facilities at Acton Peninsula - are extraneous to the principal hospital development which was put forward in the Kearney report in 1988 and to the costings of those proposals put forward in 1989. They are separate; they are different. There is no way you can claim that to add those things, as the Alliance Government expressly did, as new items which would be separately paid for represents in some way a blow-out in the hospital redevelopment budget. In fact, I am proud that the hospital redevelopment budget remained on track throughout the entire time I was Minister. We are yet to see whether the present Minister can achieve the same thing.
Mr Berry said that he fully accepted the recommendations of the review he has tabled for us today. That is fine. But what about the previous reports? What about the many previous reports, which I assume have been largely endorsed in this document, at least from what I have heard about it? The Kearney report in 1988 said quite expressly that the ACT required some 200 private beds to be up to a reasonable capacity for its needs into the twenty-first century. Mr Berry, as I have said before, is cutting private hospital beds to achieve his goals. What about his acceptance of that report in its entirety in 1989? Clearly, Mr Berry is trying to force square pegs into round holes at a quite furious rate.
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