Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Yes, Minister . . Page.. 288 ..

go to Mrs Carnell for her performance on health in the last three years. She carped and she whinged, and very successfully carped and whinged, and she certainly created a great deal of public dissatisfaction about the health system. She is still doing the same thing. That is the remarkable thing. She seems to think that she is still Opposition Leader. I was amazed to read in the paper on Saturday that Mrs Carnell was once again attacking the health system. I know why she is doing it, and members should know why she is doing it, too. In opposition, she played the cheap and easy political tactic of the carp and the whinge, and she created the impression that tucked away in the knapsack was the magic wand that, once you had a Liberal government, everything would be wonderful with health. She created those high expectations with simplistic sloganeering, carping and whingeing opposition tactics.

Now she is in the hot seat; she is the Government; she has the ability to deliver; and she is realising just how difficult it is. So, a very good political tactic, again straight out of a Yes, Minister instruction manual, is to try to deflate expectations by continuing to spew out “shock, horror!” stories about ACT Health.

Mrs Carnell: No; just statistics.

MR CONNOLLY: Statistics. Of course, the most worrying thing for her was that there was a marked drop in the level at which we were having fast throughput of category one patients over a one-month period. What is going on here? There is a Liberal government in office. Things should be changing. Things should be getting better. But the figures show that in that one month - admittedly, it is only one month, and we are not saying that everything is collapsing because there is a Liberal government - things were getting worse. What is Mrs Carnell's response to that? It is, “Oh, the former Labor Government must have fudged the figures”. That is a very dishonourable statement and a very untrue statement. We certainly did not fudge the figures. Those figures were produced by the same public servants that produce them to Mrs Carnell.

We would be very interested to see what your agenda is about reform of health. We had a clear agenda about reform of health. Our agenda for reform of health was to proceed with implementing the Andersen report. Again, Mrs Carnell, in what is becoming a quite familiar tactic, came into the house last week and said some things that were not at all accurate, when she claimed that the Labor Government had done nothing to implement the Andersen report.

Mr Humphries: Like slashing $30m from health? Is that inaccurate?

MR CONNOLLY: That is in your published Liberal Party budget.

Mr Humphries: That was your inaccurate statement, Mr Connolly.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .