Page 3806 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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MR BERRY: The fact that the answers do not please Mr Humphries does not mean that the Government is not doing well. We are doing well; we are producing the figures and we are producing the goods.
Mr Jensen: Give us July's, Wayne.
MR BERRY: Mr Jensen mumbles about figures over there, and he was complaining this morning that the committee had not received the figures for September. Be patient. You will get them. It is important that the community gets them. The community will get them. You will have them tonight. Do not worry about it.
Mr Jensen: We were told that we were going to get them last week, weren't we, Mr Moore?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Relevance please, Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: Well, keep these people off my back, Mr Speaker. Other important things for the board to consider are the development of more efficient admission and discharge practices, as well as the continued underlying decline of length of stay. There is also clinical demand, which will vary throughout the year, particularly the demand for elective surgery over the Christmas-New Year period - and I suspect that you will be busy doing other things then - and the increase in paediatric cases over winter.
Mr Humphries: Like what?
Mr Kaine: Beating the pants off Labor at the election.
MR BERRY: Well, try as you might. I mention also the need for the board to maintain control over activity levels, where there is some discretion to do so. This all involves a management strategy that runs for a full financial year, not until the next election. It runs for the full financial year.
It is interesting that the committee is going to 12 December. At the end of the day, you will never get to a position where you will be able to do anything about the report, anyway. The latter point - - -
Mr Humphries: I see. You are going to block it, are you?
MR BERRY: No. This latter point about the need for the board to maintain control over activity levels is an unfortunate fact of life in all public hospital systems, including the New South Wales system - which, you will remember, is run by a Liberal Government and which you have in the past used as a model. We can see what is going on in New South Wales right now, and we can see how it has sort of flowed over into the ACT.
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