Page 4101 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
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So where does the buck stop in this crisis? I think the buck stops right here today. It stops with the fireman, Mr Berry. This is the man who the nurses say treats them with contempt. This is the man who describes doctors as greedy, unprofessional, parasitic, disgraceful people, dishonourable. These are all quotes from you, Mr Berry, over the last week or so.
Mr Berry: "Parasitic" is wrong. The others are all right.
Mr De Domenico: You said "parasitic".
MRS CARNELL: You did say that. You said that they are arrogant; a different breed of people; belligerent; privileged; disgraceful. And the story goes on. This is a group of people that Mr Berry is trying to negotiate with. This is a group of people with whom this Minister is trying to come up with a position that will help public health in the ACT. This is how Mr Berry believes negotiations are carried out. It is a very unusual form of negotiation, and certainly a very interesting form of conciliation.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the Minister has given one of the most unprofessional performances I have ever seen from a Minister who believes that he knows something about industrial relations. This is an amazing situation. He has torpedoed public health in the ACT. I think it is really important for us now to have a bit of a look at his performance. It is important now to have a look at what has actually happened in Health. We saw from the activity report that was tabled a little while ago that in the first three months of this financial year Mr Berry's budget blew out again, this time by $3.073m. It is interesting to look at the same quarter last year. In that quarter it blew out by $3.162m. So Mr Berry is doing really well and is really achieving a lot in Health! He has improved his blow-out situation in the first quarter of the financial year from $3.162m to $3.073m. Personally, I am not too sure that that is a great achievement.
Why has this happened? Mr Berry, a minute ago, said that it is because he is treating more patients. Well, I do not know. I was at the Estimates Committee and there Mr Berry said that he had budgeted for no increase. He said lots and lots of times that he had budgeted for no increase in patients. It was interesting, because his own corporate plan said that there would be a 4 per cent increase; but Mr Berry said that that was wrong and he was right, and that budgeting for no increase, 50,500, was the appropriate way to go. In this activity report we see an actual increase in activity levels in the hospitals of 2.4 per cent.
That is interesting because, again, in the same quarter of last financial year, the year when we had this unrealistically high rate of activity in our hospitals - something that Mr Berry quoted often in the Estimates Committee; that last year was just an unusual year - we had a 5.5 per cent increase. He said that it was a very unusual year; that it would never happen again. I will state the figures again. In the first quarter of this financial year the increase was 2.4 per cent. In the first quarter of last year, what was it? It was 2.3 per cent. It was less. This is a Minister who believes that he has his budget under control. He did not budget for an increase in activity rates, even though they are trending up. They continue to trend up. Maybe that is why he had to have a dispute with the VMOs - so that he could control his activity levels. I hope that that was not the case.
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