Page 424 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 2 March 1994
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Mr De Domenico: But surgery is not about beds!
MRS CARNELL: And you do not need to get into a hospital, do you? But then, of course, you do not have rights. A Canberra Times editorial earlier this week about inadequate treatment for cancer sufferers said:
It is a sorry tale and it fits a pattern of health bungles in the ACT which end with the same bottom line: patients having to go interstate. A dispute with the visiting medical officers which should never have been allowed to boil over; idiotic biases against private clinics; an odd law on abortion; and delays in replacing radiology equipment are other examples.
Those are examples of a hopeless system. The person responsible for that is not even here. Obviously, Mr Berry is not interested.
Mr Kaine: There is hardly anybody here from the Government side.
MRS CARNELL: No, but I can understand that. This Government's appalling record on health is simply indefensible, and it was amazing to me that Ms Follett even thought of speaking about it in her statement last week. Madam Speaker, this agenda does not reflect well upon the Government.
Turning to the legislation program, the first thing you notice is the number of Bills which have appeared on previous legislative programs - 60 in all. Sixty of the Bills have actually been there before. I was fascinated to see in the first priority area for health that all of them, bar one, were first priorities on the last program.
Mr Humphries: It is an extra first now.
MRS CARNELL: A double first; but I think they were first the time before that, too, so they are triple firsts. At first I thought the Government must have produced the wrong paper. I thought there must have been a problem. But then I read on and thought, "This must be part of the Government's recycling initiatives. They are recycling Bills as well". There is some legislation that we as a party would welcome and some that we would need, obviously, to examine to decide whether we would support it or not. There are certainly bits of the legislative program that this side of the house will welcome.
As I noted earlier, the Opposition is totally committed to changing the culture of government in this Territory. Unlike the Chief Minister, we do not sit back and hope that everything will turn out all right, that maybe if you look the other way it will all go away. Our program contains real reforms, particularly in the area of government accountability, freedom of information and community participation in decision making. By the end of the year, Canberrans will know that there really is a clear alternative to this Labor Government. Our community referendum system will put real power back in the hands of Canberrans. Our changes to freedom of information laws will remove much of the secrecy with which the ACT Government seems to cloak itself - - -
Mr Berry: All you want to do is save yourselves some money. You are too miserable to pay.
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