Page 5404 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (3.49), in reply: I think the first thing that we have to reflect on is how this requirement on the Board of Health came about. On 20 November Mr Kaine moved to censure me as the Minister for Health. I read from the motion:
... for his persistent behaviour in contempt of the Assembly and its committees, exemplified in his obstinate refusal to respond to legitimate questions ...
The problem with that was that that was not the view of the rest of the members. Whilst it might have been politically okay for Mr Kaine to take that line and go for the Minister for Health for political purposes, the problem with it all was that it was wide of the mark. The Liberals have always got proper answers to the questions that I have been asked, but not answers that they like. They are politically biased answers. There is no question about that. Of course, they have been trying to provide a red herring on the issue of answers to questions ever since; but it is not working, because people are a wake-up.
Take your own answers to questions, Mr Humphries. You specifically referred to a question which called on you to report on the next sitting day on budget matters within Health, and I think I recall you saying, "Oh, it is too much trouble, too much work. I am not going to report".
Mr Humphries: Was it a fair question?
MR BERRY: Of course it was a fair question. But you just said no, and that was the answer.
The real issue is that the circumstances when the Liberal Minister had control of Health were quite different. He did not know what was going on in Health. Immediately we came to government, we required the board to report to me, the Minister, on its progress. As an indication of improvements in Health, I showed those figures to the community to show that the board was beginning to make financial reports to the responsible Minister, which it had not done in the past; neither had it been required to. Subsequently, I provided figures for the months of August and, reluctantly, for September to the Estimates Committee. That is an appropriate course. The Estimates Committee can examine those things and tear them apart in the budget context.
But what has happened now, because of this motion, is that the board has been made a scapegoat as a result of the churlishness of the Liberals on the issue of health. What happened was that Mr Moore moved an amendment which, admittedly, prevented the censure motion in relation to my behaviour from being carried - unjustifiably, in my view. But it made the Board of Health the scapegoat in all of this. I think that is what Mr Service has rightly recognised. The board have, indeed, been singled out.
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