Page 3672 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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ADJOURNMENT
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Berry: Madam Speaker, I require that the question be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH
Motion of Censure
Debate resumed.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, if Mr Connolly knew, as at 16 June, that the beds he was promising were beds that were going to be achieved by reclassifying existing facilities in the hospital system, he should have made that clear. He should have said to the Assembly, "This is how I will achieve those 24 beds", or whatever it might be. If he did not know, if that was information beyond the extent of his advice at the time, he should have come back at the first available opportunity and told us that that was the case.
Mr Lamont: Like you did when you were Minister, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: The fact is that, if you have that information, you should make it clear to the Assembly.
Mr Lamont: You will dodge that one, won't you?
MR HUMPHRIES: I have not misled the Assembly in the past.
Mr Lamont: You speak with a forked tongue.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I have not been censured by the Assembly. I have told the truth in the past, and I stand on my credibility in those matters. Mr Connolly had a duty to the Assembly, if he added new information, to come back - even if it had been provided unintentionally to the Assembly - and explain what that meant.
I certainly would not think - and I do not think any citizen of this Territory, out there in the public, in suburbia, watching TV or whatever, would think - that we actually get new beds by simply changing the label on some couches or other facilities in our hospital system. They would not say to each other, "They are new beds". They would say, "That is a bit of economic or bureaucratic fiddling".
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