Page 4022 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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Mr De Domenico: What about you? You are the Minister. You are responsible.
MR BERRY: It is the old story. I have done it, and I recognise intransigence when I see it. Madam Speaker, there have been significant positives in the development of the health budget and in service improvements. Health is moving forward, regardless of the doctors, who want to hold us back, who want to maintain controls that they are not entitled to. We will still press forward. There will be some suffering as a result of the doctors' actions. They are using patients as bargaining chips. Of course, that cannot be allowed to continue, and they have to be exposed for it. I will continue to do that. The heat has to be turned up on the doctors until they realise that their behaviour is unacceptable.
Mrs Carnell: Who is suffering?
Mr De Domenico: The patients. The queue is getting longer.
Mr Humphries: Do you care about them?
MR BERRY: The doctors can just go back to work. It will be right. They will get paid rates among the highest in Australia and have a great contract.
Mr De Domenico: What is going to happen when the nurses go out tomorrow? Are you going to savage them as well?
MR BERRY: The nurses, of course, are bound by rules. The doctors do not want to play by any.
Mrs Carnell: Because they are contractors.
MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell interjects that they are contractors. They are not contractors at all. If you were contracting for something, you would put a bid in for it; and, if you happened to be the best bid, you might get the contract. You might get the contract if your bid was good enough. Not this lot. They collusively tender and force people, with a gun at their head, to cop what they have on offer.
Madam Speaker, as I have said, health is moving forward, regardless of those who are opposed to Medicare and the public hospital system, and we will continue to work forward. I thank the committee for its efforts in examining health matters. A lot of information has been provided which I believe will be of use to those who wish to look at these matters objectively. I trust that there will be a sensible approach to the use of information and the treatment of our health system in the ACT in the future.
Debate (on motion by Mr Connolly) adjourned.
Motion (by Mr Connolly) agreed to, with the concurrence of an absolute majority:
That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent the resumption of the debate being made an order of the day for consideration as a cognate debate with the executive business order of the day relating to the Appropriation Bill 1993-94.
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