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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 2639 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Furthermore, the Assembly requires evidence of the implementation of the above on Tuesday, 12 December 1995.

Mr Speaker, for those of us who cannot see what is going on, I will spell it out in crystal clear terms. This is the motion that the Assembly passes and then, when the Government does not implement it, the Assembly comes back and there is a motion of no confidence in the Government based on the fact that it refused to implement that particular policy.

Mr Speaker, I have to say I am extremely disappointed that this should be the case; but I am not particularly surprised, given that we have a clear indication from Ms Follett that she would be back as Chief Minister before Christmas of this year. This is obviously the way she is going to do it. She could not find any other more substantive issue. She failed miserably on the budget tactics, so now it is going to be on the health centres.

Mr Kaine: Either that or as a backbencher.

Mr Hird: She might be a backbencher.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed she might. Indeed she might if some of her colleagues get their way. Mr Speaker, this is a motion that is breathtaking in its hypocrisy from a man who oversaw a considerable downgrading in the position of health centres in the period of his stewardship of the health portfolio. It is interesting to note that, despite all the vitriol hurled at this side of the chamber, even the comments made by Mr Berry about my so-called intentions to downgrade the position of health centres in this Territory, Mr Berry and Mr Connolly between them achieved much more in the way of destroying the nature of health centres in this Territory than I ever did.

Under the stewardship of Mr Berry and Mr Connolly, for example, the number of salaried doctors at health centres in this Territory halved, from 18 to nine. The extraordinary thing about it is that they are now unblushingly coming back to this place, banging the table and saying, "This Government must not be allowed to, in effect, do what we did. You must not be allowed to take our policy any further". Apparently they think that they milked the policy for all it was worth, they got the last little drop from the udder of the cow, and nobody else can come to that same cow and take any more from it. Mr Speaker, the hypocrisy is quite breathtaking. I am sometimes excoriated for having made a comment that in opposition I was able to be honest. It seems, Mr Speaker, that those opposite have the reverse problem. In government they can be honest; in opposition they do not appear to have that capacity.

Mr Speaker, Mr Connolly rightly summed up the position when he summarised as "nonsense", or "nonsensical rhetoric", to be more precise, the view that unless you have government doctors you do not have medicine in a community. That is nonsense. We are in the business of providing for stronger and better health centres through this process. Everybody knows that the model of health centres which were provided, as Mr Connolly mentioned with praise, originally by the Whitlam Government 20-odd years ago cannot be sustained, because it was not sustained under the previous Government. They themselves oversaw a process of removal of ancillary services from those health centres into regional centres, removal of salaried medical officers from those centres and replacing them with private medical practitioners, and they knew that it was

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