Page 5383 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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Mr Duby: It is your letter.
MR BERRY: No, no; hang on a minute. It is my letter. The figures that are quoted refer to different months in a year and, as members of this Assembly would know, or some of them might know, the number of beds in use in any given month varies considerably. What Mr Reid has done is this: He has selected months where there is a larger difference between the figures than in some other months, and, of course, has attempted to calculate that into some sort of cataclysm in the hospital system, for his own political interests. We all know about Bazzanomics - - -
Mr Kaine: Bazzanomics; I have heard about that before.
MR BERRY: This is the author of Bazzanomics, Mr Reid. His figures are meant to be emotive and to attract attention to an issue. His selection and quoting of those figures gives an inaccurate representation of what is in fact occurring in the hospitals. What they were provided with was a management program which was provided by the Board of Health.
Mr Duby, you may know what has occurred. There were 890 beds in our public hospital system in August this year. With the consolidation of beds onto the Woden Valley site, in late November, there were 858 beds. The hospital redevelopment, which will take five to seven years, will result, on current plans, in 998 beds. So, I think this report in the Canberra Times is sourced from somebody who is just trying to whip up a bit of hysteria about an issue.
Mr Collaery: When could the Canberra Times whip up hysteria?
MR BERRY: No, no, hang on; the source of the story, I said, was somebody interested in whipping up a bit of hysteria about the hospital system. I have to say that, on past performances, it has been whipped up by somebody who does not know a terrible lot about budgeting for hospitals, because at one point he was even suggesting that it would be a good idea for the Government to take over all those private beds, pay for them, and add them to the public beds, without paying any regard at all to the costs which might follow.
Mr Speaker, this issue of beds - and we have talked about it long and hard before - steers us off the real issue. The real issue is about the level of services which is provided in our hospital system. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the measurement of beds as a performance indicator of hospitals is the wrong measure. I think it is about time that people who wish to whip up hysteria over bed numbers, rather than look at all of the issues concerned with the delivery of hospital services, rethought their position in relation to health in the ACT. I think it is irresponsible, in the extreme, to take that line without taking into consideration all relevant issues.
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