Page 3677 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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conditioning is now rebounding on the people who put it in place in the first place. People are saying, "If that is the case, why are you cutting our services now?". That is a good question, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, and one which we have not heard answered in this place today.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.47): Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, Mr Humphries began by reading out a list of headlines on health matters. That list really did no more than reflect his own media statements and the editorial policy of the Canberra Times; they do not present the facts of matters as they affect health. Mr Humphries also made some comment about the cut that the present Government has made to health services, but what has to be understood is that that is a cut to Mr Humphries' overblown budget blow-outs. It is a proposal simply to bring the level of health expenditure back to a reasonable target that he, when he was Minister, was not able to sustain.
The Matt Abraham program this morning presented, I suppose, dramatically the case of a not so aged but certainly very infirm patient. It was certainly dramatic, perhaps approaching the sensational. But let us say that it was a serious approach and maybe a sustainable one. At this time of the year we can start to expect sensational approaches. Earlier, in question time, I referred to one that Mr Collaery made about a building in Manuka., A Ms McCarron-Benson, a representative of some party or other, was also being quite sensational in the media last week and taking a crazy run on a particular matter.
Mr Jensen: Graeme did not know about that.
MR WOOD: He did not know about it? Maybe she has been brought back into some sensible form of line. It is that time of the year, as the election approaches, when people look for sensationalism to make their points. It is a dangerous path to follow, as Mr Collaery found out.
I have some concerns that the case on the Matt Abraham program was presented in the way that it was. It was presented by a third party. I guess that, if it was to be presented, that was necessary because of the infirmity of the patient. I assume that it was done with the approval of the invalid. Yet I am not sure that she is fully aware of some of the background of what is happening. There is a further element in this, and that is that the community nurses are in some way reacting to events that are occurring around them. Mr Humphries indicated that when he read from one or two letters that he had received.
Community nurses are being asked to be more efficient in what they do, as are all in the Government Service in Canberra. I support proposals to make that service more efficient. I vividly recall the time when I was on the Social Policy Committee inquiry into the ageing, when no small number of community nurses and ex-community nurses
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