Page 3732 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
It was also suggested that this legislation was in its final phases of drafting over 12 months ago, so you really would not want to hurry these things. We will not worry too much about the hay fever sufferers and others who have had to go through another season without the medication they could have otherwise bought; we will not worry about that.
There are then the amendments to the Health Services Act 1990 - still on the agenda, and another priority two item. Apparently, the legislative drafting on this one was ready. I do not have a clue what the Minister has done with that. Mind you, it is still a priority two. I am a little reluctant to bring this up, but last but not least - remember that this is last year, when Mr Berry was Minister - were amendments to the Drugs of Dependence Act, which provided for the extension of the methadone program to involve private pharmacies. We introduced that one as well, so that one is through.
Mr Humphries: Mr Berry wanted that, did he?
MRS CARNELL: It certainly was on his legislative program, but we will not worry about that.
Mr Humphries: What happened, Wayne? Did you get rolled in the party room?
MRS CARNELL: No, this was his corporate executive. This was legislation that was approved to go into his budget sitting program. But we will not worry about that. That was all a bit of a disaster, really. None of those pieces of legislation, except the food legislation, which had been on the agenda for two years, came forward.
Mr Humphries has already mentioned that, in Mr Berry's own introduction of the legislative program, he said that 41 of 62 Bills were introduced in the autumn sitting, and again I shall quote, because everybody likes quoting this piece of paper. Mr Berry said:
I consider this to be a reasonable strike rate, given the abbreviated nature of the autumn sittings.
The budget sitting was not abbreviated; we did not have an election in this one. You would assume that that means that Mr Berry thought they could do better than 66 per cent in this sitting. In health, how many Bills do we have? We have one out of 15; that is 7 per cent. So, if Mr Berry thought 66 per cent was all right but he could probably do better, down to 7 per cent is obviously a particularly impressive effort!
Mr De Domenico: But he is up to date with his Christmas cards.
MRS CARNELL: That is more than I am. I think we should look at the legislation on his first priority list at the moment. First of all, we have the Independent Health Complaints Unit legislation and the subsequent amendments to the health registration Acts, which cover a number of pieces of legislation. This was Mr Berry's primary promise. This was a thing that was going to happen: "This is really going to make a huge difference", and it just might do that if it is drafted appropriately. But we do not know how it is drafted; we do not know where it is up to. That really has not happened.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .