Page 3199 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 November 1992
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Mrs Carnell: Well, why can't I talk to bureaucrats?
MADAM SPEAKER: Could members on my right desist from interjecting, please?
MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell asks, "Why can't I talk to them?". The Liberals are not in government. They have to learn to understand that there is a difference. Mrs Carnell asked that the figures that are provided on a quarterly basis be provided in roughly the same form, as I see it, as they were provided month after month by Labor in the last financial year. I am quite relaxed about that, on the face of it. I have said that that seems okay with me and I am having senior people examine the matter at the moment. I said yesterday that I would not have any difficulty with that approach. In principle I do not and we are quite happy to provide those figures. There is no big deal about this. If you want to politicise it and rip into the public hospital system like the Liberals - the Liberals who have no policy on the protection of our public hospital system - - -
Mr Cornwell: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I refer you to standing order 118(a).
MADAM SPEAKER: May I point out that if people had desisted from interjecting it would have helped the Minister to terminate his answer.
Mr Humphries: Come on, Madam Speaker. That is garbage.
MADAM SPEAKER: Just a bit of advice.
Health Budget
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to Ms Follett as Treasurer. Have you, or has anyone in your department, been approached to invoke the business rules for Health, which Mr Berry referred to earlier as guidelines for supplementation and a series of other descriptions of the health budget? Have you indications that this is likely to happen prior to Christmas?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, to the best of my knowledge I have not been approached; but I should say that there is continual discussion and negotiation by Treasury with a number of departments and I have no doubt that that occurs with Health as well at all points through the year. All departments have an obligation to live within their budgets. Where Treasury can be of assistance to them in doing that, they are only too willing to take on that role and they frequently do provide that kind of assistance.
Madam Speaker, I would like to say, in relation to the September quarterly report which has been released by the Board of Health, that I do take the view - I think it is a very correct view that Mr Berry has put forward - that to extrapolate a full year's effect from any one quarter can be very misleading. Quite clearly, the activities, the costs and so on within our health system vary through the year. I would have thought members opposite, at least one of whom has had some experience with a health budget - not a happy experience, but some experience - would have recognised that. Quite clearly, over the Christmas period there is a slowdown in activity in Health. That happens every time. So, the September quarter cannot be said to be a typical picture of the whole year. I think they are quite wrong on that score.
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