Page 405 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 2 March 1994
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Mr Humphries: That is a pretty accurate description.
MR BERRY: It is not in crisis.
Mrs Carnell: Sue Belsham thought it was.
MR BERRY: It is absolutely outrageous and gutter politics for somebody like you from a health background to be criticising the public hospital system in the ACT.
Mrs Carnell: No; I just criticised you.
MR BERRY: If you want to go to personalities, go for me. That is fine. Go for me on personalities, I do not mind that; but get yourself back to the health issue. Personalities are not what people out there are - - -
Mr Humphries: May I quote a few Wayne Berry press releases from 1991?
MR BERRY: If you do not like me, that is fine; I can wear that. In fact I can smile about that, I am perfectly happy with that. But when it comes to the hospital system, lay off. If you are fair dinkum, you will. You know very well that we have a hospital system that is doing all right, thank you very much. We have 50,000-odd people going through the place every year - - -
Mrs Carnell: With 3,688 people on the waiting list, 200 fewer beds - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MR BERRY: Here we go on beds; it is lovely. Do we treat beds in our hospital system? No, we do not; we treat people - 50,500 of them last year; over 400,000 occasions of service in outpatients. It is big business and it is quality service which the people of the ACT expect and enjoy. In this city there is general acceptance of the need for a strong public system. Mrs Carnell is swimming upstream on that score. All she wants to do is to tear down the public hospital system. Well, you cannot, because it is doing well, and everybody knows it, no matter how much you try to destroy it. You and your mates federally tried to rip apart the Medicare system at the last election. It did not work. That would have ripped into the public hospital system.
Here we have 37.2 commendations per 1,000 admissions, and 6.3 complaints per 1,000 admissions, which is 0.6 per cent, and 95 or 96 per cent of people walk away from the hospital system reasonably content with the arrangements. So, 50,500 people treated, and over 400,000 occasions of service in outpatients. The Liberals are a joke on this issue and it is time the community were awake-up to them. All they are interested in, on Mrs Carnell's own admissions, is a personal attack on me. They are not interested in the health system.
Ms Follett: Or Sue Belsham or anyone.
Mrs Carnell: Sue left. She was sensible.
MR BERRY: Or Sue Belsham. I saw your reports in the paper. Were they not your comments in the paper?
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