Page 4076 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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MR BERRY: They are organising this chaos.
Mr Humphries: Madam Speaker, I accept that the Minister is quite upset about what has been going on in the hospitals, but to describe a particular doctor in Canberra as being responsible for organising these sorts of incidents is a quite disgraceful attack on an individual. I would ask the person responsible for that allegation - I think it was Mr Connolly - to withdraw it.
MADAM SPEAKER: We have no standing order to cover that. There is no point of order. Continue, Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: This chaos is being organised by those militant greedy elements within the AMA. There is no question about this. This will give you a demonstration of how these people operate. Earlier on, on 20 November, I received this letter from the president of the AMA in which he said:
With regard to the provision of emergency services, I am advised that individual specialists have indicated their willingness to provide emergency services -
not many of them, it seems -
which would include any case where a life or limb is threatened -
they changed their mind on that one, by the sound of it -
or if there is serious discomfort to the patient.
Perforation and peritonitis, on any judgment, on any measure, would threaten life anyway and would cause serious discomfort. What disgraceful behaviour! This is the most interesting part:
To this end a confinement is seen as urgent.
That is what they said in their letter. Then we go to what happened on ABC radio this morning. Dr Bates was talking about obstetrics and he said:
Now, when these instances are discussed amongst the division of O and G -
obstetrics and gynaecology -
they feel that to prevent disasters the method of handling patients has got to be altered. In other words, before a problem eventuates, if a patient is considered normal, it is felt that they should be moved out of Canberra -
it comes to what is normal -
and only the most urgent patients should be treated. We have not got a normal group of people to fall back on.
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