Page 4607 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 20 November 1991
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answering questions quickly and succinctly. Look at any of the problems related to the parliaments around Australia and the issue of parliamentary reform. Any political science student in their first year is told in any text that one of the major problems associated with parliaments around Australia is the abuse of question time by various Ministers.
It is most important that standing orders well and truly cover the answering of questions. I think the standing orders are quite specific about question time. It is unfortunate that over the years, in successive parliaments, a degree of latitude in the asking and answering of questions has been allowed to develop. This is referred to in House of Representatives Practice. As I said, one of the most important factors of the need to improve and upgrade the accountability of our parliaments is question time and what it is all about. It is about Ministers being accountable for their portfolios. The buck stops with them, Mr Speaker.
In this case it does not stop with the Board of Health; it stops with the Minister who is responsible. The Ministers are the people who are responsible to the Assembly and the people. I suggest that it is about time that Ministers opposite, particularly Mr Berry, took due note of that and sought to lift their game in relation to the answering of questions from members of this Assembly. We are asking those questions on behalf of the people of the ACT. The people of the ACT have a right to expect Ministers to answer those questions quickly and succinctly. They should provide information to the community in relation to the operation of our parliament.
MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (5.44): I am speaking to the amendment. I leave aside some of the comments that Mr Jensen has made. Mr Jensen wants to write the answers to the questions that he asks me and for me to sit back and let him belt me around the head with them. I am not going to do that. This is a political process and we are just going to have to accept that. We accepted it. Just as we grizzled and griped about it when you were in office, we expect that you will grizzle and gripe about the answers you get because they do not give you the sort of information that you might want to use to bash us around the head. That is the political process and we are going to have to live with it on both sides.
In relation to the provision of figures by the Board of Health, I have expressed deep reservations about the provision of those figures because I think the further politicisation of that board is dangerous. It is dangerous for our hospital and health service delivery because they are under enough stress now. Undoubtedly, Health has been under the microscope for some time. In opposition, we expressed concern, through the media, about the way the former Government managed hospitals. I think that was a legitimate process. It is a legitimate process for the now
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