Page 4605 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 20 November 1991
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For the moment it is appropriate that these figures be provided to members of the Assembly, in effect publicly, within 48 hours of Mr Berry receiving them. It is also important that those figures be accompanied, I believe, where there is a problem, with a comment from the Minister. Of course, 48 hours gives him an appropriate opportunity to say, "Yes, we can see that some things are going off the rails. Therefore the board is intending to take this corrective action, and I have recommended further corrective action". I think that is the appropriate response.
I think that this amendment gives the opportunity for us to step back from a censure motion, which under our tradition is a very serious matter, and gives the Minister the chance to provide what we want. It is a chance for this Assembly actually to gain some advantage from this situation. I also point out that Mr Berry should understand that he is providing the information to members. It should be understood that that, clearly, is what the Assembly is seeking.
MR JENSEN (5.37): Mr Speaker, in the interests of time, I will be reasonably brief in my comments here today. One of the reasons why it has been necessary for the Assembly to pay close attention to the operation of the health budget is that there has been a long period of concern about it. In fact, prior to the Assembly operating, successive Commonwealth Auditor-General's reports made comments about problems associated with the health budget and the ability to get appropriate accounts and reports. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I recall looking at some of these reports, some of which go back to 1983, in relation to problems associated with the health budget.
We only have to look at comments made by our own Auditor-General on the health budget, and also the Enfield report, which has already been mentioned today, to see why this Assembly needs to have this sort of information about the operation of the health budget. Mr Moore probably put it quite succinctly when he said that because of these concerns not only were a number of questions asked about the issue during the Estimates Committee hearings but also questions are continually being raised on the floor of this house.
I guess that a lot of it has to do with the problems associated with the answers or non-answers provided by the Minister. Members will recall that during the Estimates Committee hearings we started off getting answers saying that the information would be available by the 10th of the month. At first we were going to get July figures; then we were not going to get July figures. Eventually we did get some figures. I think they were for August, from memory.
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