Page 2668 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I do not know whether Mr Berry is trying to tell us that the cost is now going to escalate under his management, but I suspect that it probably will. Although he makes much of the fact that our operating budget for the hospitals blew out last year, he conveniently ignores the fact that so it did during his ministry. There was an underlying weakness in the management systems of the operating hospitals, apart from the reconstruction of the hospital system, over previous years. He cannot deny that we took that in hand, we had it thoroughly investigated, and we set in train the mechanisms to get the management under control. I repeat that that was quite separate from the reconstruction of the hospitals; that was the operating costs. For him to assert that we were going to set about this no matter what the cost is patently a misrepresentation of the facts and he cannot justify it.
On the question of the balance between public hospital beds and private ones, I notice that, despite his responses to questioning during question time, he has not said what he intends the public and private hospital sectors to provide by way of beds 10 years from now. In fact, I am not even sure that he is clear on what he is providing now, because his statement does not say anything about that. He talks about 95 beds in the private sector that are unused. So what? What does that mean? What does it mean in terms of the evolutionary requirements of our hospital system over the next five to 10 years? He has not addressed that at all. We knew that the requirement by the year 2000 was something of the order of 1,000 beds in the public hospital system and about 300 additional beds that could easily be accommodated in the private hospital system at no cost to the taxpayer.
Mr Berry: That is rubbish. There is cost to the taxpayer.
MR KAINE: That is not rubbish. They are figures that were available to you when you were the Minister 18 months ago.
Mr Berry: That is rubbish, and you know it.
MR KAINE: It is not rubbish; it is facts. Our program was aimed to produce the 1,000 beds that are required in the public hospital system, supplemented by private hospital beds as needed by the community and at no cost to the community. But you have not addressed that. In your blind ideological approach to these matters you have not even addressed the question of how many beds the public hospital system is going to produce. You are very quick to criticise the Alliance Government, but you have not even addressed the problem yourself. I do not know and, I suspect, neither does anybody else. In fact, I suggest that even you do not know what you expect the public hospital system to generate in terms of public hospital beds, let alone what the total requirement is. If there is a requirement for more beds over the next 10 years than those two public hospitals can produce, you have no idea how they will be generated.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .