Page 2053 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 8 September 1992
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Members of this Assembly will inevitably have to choose whether they take the option where the Government controls the price to those people who are forced onto the methadone program or throw it open to the free market, where you are judged on the state of your dress as you walk through the door as to how much the service should cost. That is the sort of extreme we have to be concerned about when it comes to the privatisation of public services.
Mr De Domenico: What absolute poppycock! That is line 4 in the Stalinist manifesto, is it?
MR BERRY: You tell me, Mr De Domenico - - -
Mr Humphries: You are losing every vote in pharmacy you ever had. Even Mr Aliprandi will not vote for you after this.
MR BERRY: I will tell you what; that is 48 votes I never had and 48 I am not going to fight for.
Mrs Carnell: It is 324.
MR BERRY: Do not worry about them; they are the ones who toe the line for the 48. Do not let us kid ourselves. There are a lot of Labor voters amongst the 300. In any event, the choice for members of this Assembly is whether they take the privatisation line, as proposed by the Liberals. There is no question about it; this is consistent with Liberal ideology. They have consistently proposed that the profitable parts of successful public enterprise be made available to the private sector and that the public sector be left with the more difficult cases.
Mrs Carnell: We do not make a profit out of the methadone program.
Mr Cornwell: Like Qantas.
MR BERRY: They may well fidget on their seats. They do not like this sort of important information, which the public already believes in, being wheeled up to them time after time. I do not mind doing it, because I like to see them a bit agitated; but I must say that I have not been able to get a blush out of Mr Kaine.
Mr Kaine: No; and you won't, either.
MR BERRY: Mr Kaine is not blushing. He is steely hard when it comes to this. He is prepared to allow this sort of legislation. This legislation is allowed to be brought into this place by one of his members, and it will bring some discredit to the Assembly. But ours is legislation that ought to be supported. I present the explanatory memorandum to the Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Moore) adjourned.
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