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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (21 May) . . Page.. 1506 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

This Assembly has discredited Mrs Carnell for her management of the health budget by censuring her, first, for recklessly misleading the Assembly in relation to certain matters in relation to VMOs which, of course, relate to overexpenditure in the health budget; and, secondly, for her mismanagement of the health budget. I think it is most appropriate that this Assembly send a message to Mrs Carnell that it will not tolerate these sorts of cheap theatrics either. This is very clearly an attempt to divert attention from the facts of the health mismanagement. There is no question about that. It is an unnecessary Bill and ought to have been withdrawn. I trust that members in this place will see through this and see this for what it is.

MR DE DOMENICO (Minister for Urban Services) (11.16): Mr Speaker, is it not incredible the way people who have been involved in this place for a number of years tend to have these memory lapses from time to time when it suits them? We just heard a litany from Mr Berry. I recall that many years ago, before I was elected to this place, there was a public furore because some health budgets had been blown out. I think the first one that was blown out was Mr Berry's, actually. Mr Humphries, unfortunately, was also seen to be human because Health blew out under him as well.

Mr Berry: But Labor got it right. It balanced the books.

MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Berry interjects and says, "Labor got it right". I recall Mr Berry being interviewed on, I think, the ABC. I used to listen to it at that stage. Mr Berry kept saying, "No, no; the health budget really did not blow out because we have these business rules", which literally meant that you overspend and you introduce these things called business rules and they catch up the money that you overspent. By transferring money from one thing to another, you say, "Listen, I did not really overspend; they are business rules". That was the litany under Labor.

Mr Berry did it not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Did he ever once think to himself, "I must do something about fixing it."? You would think that, having done it four times, he had learnt his lesson. Of course not. He did not do anything about it. Let us see what he tried to do to stop people from realising that he had overspent budgets. Without doing anything to solve the problem, the waiting list doubled under Mr Berry. That is one way of doing it. The fewer people you get into hospital, or the more people that line up waiting to get in, the less money you can spend. Perhaps he thought that was a good idea.

Mr Kaine: It did not get the total bill down.

MR DE DOMENICO: It did not get the total bill down; and it doubled the waiting list. Mr Berry stood up and said that things were hunky-dory under Labor. They were fantastic; things were on the mend. He doubled the waiting list. What a wonderful way of fixing the health system - by doubling the waiting list! Mr Berry supplemented the health budget through business rules. He saw no more patients although he spent more money. That was Mr Berry's economic rationalism. The loony Left economic rationalism so ably discussed by Graham Richardson was, "Spend more money and treat fewer patients". That is what this mob opposite are wanting people out there to believe - spend more money, see fewer patients, and therefore they will fix the health problem.

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