Page 4110 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 24 November 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR BERRY: My suggestion to the Opposition is that, instead of spending time trivialising and sensationalising health issues, they put their energies into convincing the ACT VMOs that they should sign the contracts that are currently in their hands in order that we can get the hospitals back to normal. They would have less to whinge about.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.35): Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Berry has resorted to the weapon which he uses most frequently, particularly when he is under pressure, as he is at the moment, and that is to lash out with invective at all concerned. The issue in this dispute has been the handling of this process of negotiations between the Government and the VMOs. Mr Berry has excoriated those VMOs; he has attacked them personally. I note that he has named them personally in this house, although he has taken great exception in the past to naming individuals in this house. Apparently doctors do not enjoy the status of other individuals who Mr Berry seems to think should be protected.
Ms Follett: When they have already gone public on the media.
MR HUMPHRIES: The point remains that you can say things about somebody in the media which you can say in this place, but they are two quite different forums. What Dr Shanahan or somebody else might say about Mr Berry is nothing compared with what Mr Berry can say about Dr Shanahan, and, unfortunately, it turns out that that is the case, particularly when we come to Dr Bates and the comment made about Dr Bates in this place this afternoon. I would hope that the members of the Government are ashamed of the comments that have been made in that respect.
I do not believe that it is possible to use any realistic or viable test of the achievement of our hospital system and say with a straight face that the system is any better than it was two years ago. It does not matter what test you use, whether it be waiting lists, or bed numbers, or the morale of the people within the system, or the level of industrial disputation within the system, or the creation of facilities and resources, or the number of people waiting for non-hospital services; on any of those tests, on any of those bases, you have to say that today our hospital system is in a much less well-functioning state, a much less happy state, than it was even two years ago. I do not think that the Government has even attempted today to present any empirical evidence at all that we have a better situation as a result of two-and-a-half years or so of a Labor administration. Clearly, Madam Speaker, we are rather worse off as a result of that experience.
The measures we might use are varied, but I invite the Government to use the same measures that they have used in the past. Let us look at Mr Berry's comments back in the very early days of his own ministry. He said very clearly that long hospital waiting lists were a clear indicator that the system was not providing the necessary level of service. Waiting lists today are close to double what they were when Mr Berry said that they were a clear indicator that the system was not providing the necessary level of service. Mr Berry pretends now that when he said that he really meant that it was only one minor indicator of a poor level of service in the hospital system. He did not say that. He did not pretend today that he was misrepresented or misquoted in the Canberra Times.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .