Page 2774 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
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MR LAMONT (8.43): The sorry thing about rising tonight to oppose Mrs Carnell's Bill and support the Government's Bill - - -
Mr Moore: It is embarrassing, isn't it?
MR LAMONT: It is embarrassing, Michael, and it is embarrassing for one reason. Within the last 24 hours, like most of you, I had the opportunity of watching a Four Corners program which talked about the privatisation of medicine and medical services, particularly in the United States. It is easy to draw the line on what is being proposed here. I see that Mr Westende has given in already. Mr Westende, in your position I would have given in too. The simple fact is that there have been a range of activities around Australia over a number of years where we have seen a gradual encroachment by the private sector upon areas of medical support - indeed, direct medicine. I suggest that, by and large, that has been to the detriment of the health system in Australia - although not in all cases, I will quite readily admit.
We are seeing a very disturbing trend in the State of New South Wales, where we have a State government hell-bent on selling off not only major assets of the people of New South Wales but also the New South Wales health system. From little acorns do big trees grow, I point out to Mr Cornwell. This might surprise him. I know that he thinks that what his colleagues in New South Wales do is absolutely great and that we should be following it here. I am here to tell him that that will not happen while ever this Government is in power. They are trying to institutionalise the private sector of medicine in New South Wales. That is not a position we should allow to be adopted in the ACT. It should be resisted on any account and wherever it can be. Mrs Carnell's Bill proposes basically to privatise the dispensing of methadone in the ACT. That is really what it comes down to.
It is not, at the end of the day, a great question about whether methadone programs should be put in, whether they should be expanded, how they should be funded and what area they should be funded from, where support is necessary. It is about whether or not the private sector in the ACT should become involved any further in the dispensing of medical care. That is the issue that confronts us tonight, and we have two competing views. They are not views which are in synergy.
Mr Moore: Why not recognise the right of clients to choose?
MR LAMONT: I hear Mr Moore in the background interjecting once again, "What about the right of clients to choose?". What is being proposed by Mrs Carnell's Bill is, by and large, a denial of that right to choose by making it principally available through the private sector.
Mr De Domenico: That is not true. We are supporting your Bill as well.
MR LAMONT: As well?
Mr De Domenico: Yes.
MR LAMONT: So that over time you can attempt to make it the private sector exclusively.
Mr De Domenico: You are in government; we are not.
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