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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 775 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Mr Connolly would be sitting here and he could be charged with recklessly misleading, because he was relying on exactly the same cost model that the Chief Minister relied upon. Are you four people going to judge that the Chief Minister is not entitled to rely on such a model, particularly when you read further in the Auditor-General's report that "the model was developed for use in the arbitration case ..."? In other words, that was the model that went to the industrial relations commissioner during the arbitration process. Is Mr Berry really going to sit there and say that a model, that was accepted by the commissioner as being reasonable and fair, two years later should be ruled by this Assembly to be unfair? Not in my book.

I do not believe, Mr Speaker, that the case put forward by the Opposition has been proven. In fact, I think that the Auditor-General's report itself indicates quite plainly that an assertion of recklessly misleading this Assembly cannot be substantiated. If the four members on the crossbenches in this place find the Chief Minister guilty of the assertion put forward by the Opposition merely to make a political point, if they are going to substantiate that, they become conspirators in something which I believe, simply, to be totally unfair.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (11.52): I was a bit surprised about this motion today. I must admit that, having seen the report from the Auditor-General on VMO contracts arrive last night, and having had a look at it, I had come to the conclusion that what was probably going to happen today was a motion attacking the Government, or even censuring the Government, for its handling of the negotiations over VMO contracts, or its projection about what it would be able to achieve in the long term about those contracts. In a sense, the last thing I expected was a motion suggesting that the Chief Minister and Minister for Health had misled the house.

What was clear to me from this report was that there was very much a criticism of the way in which the Department of Health had produced its projections for this saving to occur. That is what my reading of the report suggests. Mr Berry obviously can read between the lines and read something else. We have all benefited over the last few years from reports which have demonstrated problems with the way in which the department, at various stages, has gone about its business of accounting for the money that it receives from the Treasury. There have been many problems in that respect. Mr Berry would know about that because he presided over two budgets that blew out in the course of his stewardship.

Mr Speaker, what negotiations had happened and what expectations had been created were the sorts of issues I expected to be the subject of debate today. Instead, what we have is a motion essentially saying that the Chief Minister knew, or should have known, that these projections were not going to be achievable. Mr Speaker, I do not think, reading this document, that that is really a fair conclusion to draw. I think that what comes out of this document is that there is a problem with the way in which the department has traditionally - not just under this Government, but traditionally - handled costing arrangements for visiting medical officers, and that what is needed is a review of that structure and that cost model, rather than an attack on the Government, which has accepted, as previous governments have, the advice of the department on that score.

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