Page 5806 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
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MR HUMPHRIES (5.14): I rise to support the comments made by Mr Kaine and to indicate that I too think that this Government has been a little bit less than consistent and less than forthright about the way in which it has dealt with this very sensitive and important issue to the Territory.
Let us just remind ourselves of the reasons why we have been looking at this question of corporatisation with respect to major government enterprises. The Mitchell Health Services Supply Centre, as it was originally, is a perfect example of governments getting involved in the provision of services and doing so extremely badly.
Nobody could possibly stand in this place and pretend other than that the Mitchell Health Services Supply Centre has been an extremely inefficient activity for the ACT Government, and before it for the Federal Government, and has unnecessarily cost the Territory taxpayers and before that the taxpayers of Australia large sums of money. As I recall the figures - I think they are right, but they are approximately correct if they are not absolutely correct - the cost of running the supply centre was something like $13m a year, of which $12m was government subsidy. Only $1m of that running cost was met by income produced by the activity.
For one of the best such facilities in the whole of Australia, that was quite simply a disgraceful outcome. I think that to even delay this proposal by six months has been a quite unacceptable and quite disgraceful act on the part of this Government. There is simply no strong argument for not proceeding with this corporatisation. We now hear that they are going to go ahead with it. Wonderful; here is the legislation; we have considered the appropriate structures and we are going ahead with it today.
The question still needs to be asked: What substantive issues were traversed and considered by this Government in making this decision? What difficult issues were addressed or put to one side?
Ms Follett: All the relevant ones.
MR HUMPHRIES: We hear the Chief Minister say, "All the relevant ones". Well, I do not know what they are. I do not know what issues she has dealt with differently that were not comprehensively dealt with by the Alliance Government before it left office. The Government has reached very similar arrangements with respect to staffing to those that we had reached, so obviously there was no difference in the outcome of negotiations with the trade union movement.
Mr Berry: But we do not have access to all your decisions, and all your advice too.
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