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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 2813 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: You people love to do that. You love to take a word and twist it. The fact is that that is not the management committee of the Department of Health. Listen and you will learn. It was a management committee of the Booz Allen reform process and, as such, it does not constitute a decision for implementation; it constitutes a recommendation.

Having said that, having exposed the distortion that those opposite are involved with to try to prove their nefarious points on this Bill, let me say that the Government does not resile from the thrust of that recommendation. It is one the Government will be very willing to accept because the Government believes that it is important to be able to provide services in the most efficient way and the way best designed to consolidate the best quality of care within our system, particularly in the Department of Health. I stand by a process of supporting the establishment of centres of excellence, so to speak, within our health service, to be able to ensure that what we are offering is not mediocre services on a large number of sites but very high quality services at central locations.

There are very few people who can walk to the Woden Valley Hospital. Almost everybody who goes to the Woden Valley Hospital will be travelling there by some form of transport, be it private or public. Similarly, those who use the consolidated mammography service in Civic - - -

Mr Connolly: Just like the health centres, we have blown the whistle on another - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: No, you were not here, Mr Connolly.

Mr Connolly: I was listening to what you were saying, Mr Humphries.

MR HUMPHRIES: You will have heard that you owe the Chief Minister an apology for having suggested that that was the management committee of the Department of Health.

Mr Connolly: Oh, come on! It is her department that is involved in this process.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, Mr Connolly - - -

Mr Connolly: They are departmental officials involved in this. This is being driven out of the - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: I am not so sure that they are, actually. I think some of them are consultants.

Mr Connolly: Some of them might be, but the department is involved in this.

MR HUMPHRIES: Some of them might be? Will you accept, if you cannot prove otherwise, that that was not the management committee of the Department of Health, as you told the Assembly it was?

Mr Connolly: Gary, you are squirming because we have blown the whistle on an attempt to cut a fundamental health service. You people are contemptible.

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