Page 3065 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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I suspect, given the few short months since that Government has resumed office, that we will once again see that in fact it is the conservatives, so called, who are actually better able to manage industrial relations in this Territory than is Labor. We have the capacity, and the gumption at stages, to say, "This is what must be done for the Territory. You might not like it; it might mean some job losses but it has to happen". That is what we did; and we succeeded. We lost very few days indeed in the hospital system as a result of our plans to restructure. The hospital redevelopment, in fact, lost almost none. The two most significant causes of lost days in the hospital system while I was Minister, Mr Deputy Speaker, were the nurses' shift changes, which in fact occurred before the hospital redevelopment was announced, and the dispute with the Hospital Employees Federation, which I think even those opposite would acknowledge was a productive dispute, if I may use that expression, from the point of view of the Territory.
Mr Deputy Speaker, those opposite are engaging in a deceit. They should acknowledge that deceit and say plainly to the people of the ACT, "We have picked up where the Alliance left off because the Alliance made the right decisions about hospital funding and programs in this Territory". Let them be honest about the matter and they will be taken seriously at the next election.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.17): It is interesting to hear the rhetoric of this failed former Health Minister attempting to attack the Labor Government's record in this important area. Mr Humphries will go on record in this Assembly, apart from being the second shortest lived Leader of the Opposition, as having the longstanding record for blowing out a budget. His homilies on good management, his homilies on the Liberals' management of the health system, just do not stack up against that extraordinary budgetary blow-out. This former Minister could not manage his program while he set about the process that inexorably led to the closure of the Royal Canberra Hospital.
Despite the mist of rhetoric of Mr Humphries' remarks, which we all have come to enjoy and anticipate when he is about to speak, there was a very fundamentally honest statement that he made, and he is to be credited for this. It perhaps stands in contrast to Mr Moore's attack. Mr Humphries honestly and fairly stated what Ms Follett said on 15 May, which was that the Labor Government would like to keep the hospital open, would look at the possibility of keeping it open. I do not have the precise quote, but he quoted it accurately. The assertion, as accurately quoted, was that Labor would do what it could. That is to be contrasted with Labor's very clear statement at all times
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