Page 2647 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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MR DE DOMENICO: No, you have not. All you are doing is coming good with your promises to your left-wing mates. That is it, full stop. That is what you are doing. You have the numbers and you are crunching them now. As I said, Madam Speaker, the Government is committing its health budget to picking up future shortfalls in the operating costs of the proposed abortion clinic. I will not get into the freedom of information aspects of this whole issue, nor into the tactics of concealment which I have alluded to.
Let us have a look at the cost-benefit analysis, because we are trying to limit this conversation to the realms of financial responsibility. The financial statements of the Family Planning Association make interesting reading. Here is Mr Berry talking about how he is providing, at very low cost to the public purse, all these sorts of facilities to the Family Planning Association, and Mrs Carnell keeps saying, "What rent are you charging?". Let us have a look. The financial statements in the 1991-92 annual report of the Family Planning Association of the ACT show that in that year its activities yielded a surplus of $91,400. So in one year alone the Family Planning Association made a profit of $91,000. In 1990-91 it made a profit of $99,000, and in 1989-90 it made $119,000. It transferred all those amounts to accumulated funds. So here is an organisation with accumulated funds of over $300,000 being given another $100,000 to refurbish and to run a clinic.
The Family Planning Association charges for many of its services. An obvious example, Madam Speaker, is the profit of well over 100 per cent made on its sales of contraceptives, which provide a substantial proportion of its profits. So we have an organisation - - -
Mr Lamont: How much does the pharmacy put them up?
MR DE DOMENICO: We have an organisation that is being given something rent free, Mr Lamont, unlike pharmacies - a non-profit organisation with hundreds of thousands of dollars in its bank account, and Mr Berry stands up in this house and says that he does not know about the recurrent costs. One wonders whether Mr Berry has asked questions about the cost to the ACT health system of morbidity and long-term psychiatric sequelae arising from the abortions that this organisation is going to perform. (Extension of time granted)
Mr Berry has not stood up here and talked about the legal consequences that may arise from abortions of minors, without parental consent, and he mentioned girls at school. One wonders whether he has thought about that. One wonders about the reaction of users of other health facilities at the City health building who may be people who disagree with the facilities that Mr Berry has alluded to. Mr Berry stood up but said not one word about what it is likely to cost the public purse in years to come. The figures are on the public record. The Family Planning Association estimated that hundreds of thousands of dollars are to be spent purely and simply to maintain the services that Mr Berry has alluded to today.
If the people opposite, if people in this Assembly, believe that the establishment and the continued funding of an abortion clinic is one of the highest priorities, not only in the health budget but in other budgets, they will not support Mr Humphries's motion. Even people opposite believe that there are other better things to spend money on in the health area. Take, for example, a cancer registry.
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