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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 978 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

in the Territory. Each time that they have been in office the hospital system has ended up in trouble. Mr Humphries is twitching on his seat in fear that he will be mentioned. Mr Humphries will never escape mention when it comes to mismanagement of the health system. Of course, the only people to come in on budget in this system were Labor.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Relevance, Mr Berry.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, the situation is clear; there must be an independent inquiry into this matter. It must be independent of the administration, it must be independent of hospital management, and it must be independent of the health professionals involved. Mrs Carnell should stop kidding herself about the inquiries that she claims are independent. They are not acceptable to the community, and there needs to be an independent inquiry which is seen as truly independent by the community.

Mrs Carnell keeps trumpeting about the fraud investigation unit. That relates to a criminal matter, and they are entitled to get on with it. That would not come within the purview of the inquiry that I am suggesting. What is required here is a very close look, on a professional level, at the conduct of the doctors; a very close look in terms of the management of the hospital system; and a very close look at the means by which we can prevent this from occurring again and the means by which we can restore the confidence of the community. The confidence of the community in our health system has been plummeting since Mrs Carnell came to office. We reached the nadir yesterday, with Mrs Carnell's call for more money because she had failed again. It is an absolutely dismal performance. She has failed on all scores. That is why the confidence in our health system needs restoration, and it needs restoring quickly.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (11.14): Mr Speaker, this has to be the strangest motion I have ever seen put to this Assembly - we have all seen some pretty strange ones - with the sole exception, perhaps, of some of those that Dennis Stevenson put to us from time to time. Those of us who were around then do remember some fairly strange motions from those days. I am not even sure that Mr Berry himself understands the motion that has been put on the notice paper, because he seems to have come up with some incredible furphies on this situation.

Mr Berry: It sounds like it is raining cats and dogs out there, Kate. The hospital might be interested.

MRS CARNELL: Again, Mr Berry believes that this is a joke. We do not believe that the health system is a joke.

I was also interested in Mr Berry's comments that professional treatment in our hospital is not up to scratch. I am sorry, Mr Berry; the professional treatment in our hospital is up to scratch.

Mr Berry: When did I say that?

MRS CARNELL: Right in the middle of your speech. Professional treatment in our hospital, I must put on record, is extremely good. We have some very good doctors, nurses, and other allied health professionals. In fact, I think we have the best in Australia.

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