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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1860 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (11.04): Mr Speaker, I move:

That this House censure Mr Berry for misleading it as to the number of operations conducted in ACT public hospitals between November 1993 and March 1994.

Yesterday in this place Mr Berry asked Mrs Carnell a question. The question that he asked her was followed, as it always is, by a supplementary question. The supplementary question alleged that Mrs Carnell had misled the people of the Territory, both in this place and outside, as I recall the wording of that question, as to the number of operations that had been conducted in the ACT in a period under the Carnell Government compared with a period under the Follett Government.

I do not have the detail of Mr Berry's question because Mr Berry asked the question and yesterday's Hansard is not yet available. I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker; we do have yesterday's Hansard. This is, of course, the proof Hansard. This was Mr Berry's question, and I quote it directly:

Does the Chief Minister seriously believe that following the Federal Liberals cut to state funding that Mr Carr would hand over the $16m you are talking about ... do you think he would do that just to supplement your budget flop, and also do you think he would hand over ... $16m to somebody who has just completed a year where 2,000 patients in our hospital system have not received the operations they were supposed to get?

That, I think, was a clear reference to the issue that Mr Berry had been running around with on this question, with the media in particular. In fact, he got coverage in the electronic media about 10 days ago concerning the number of operations conducted in the ACT public hospital system. Mr Berry made very serious allegations about that matter.

The background to that is that Mr Berry put out a release. That release said:

In her first year as Health Minister Mrs Carnell failed to match last year's performance with over two thousand less operations being carried out at Woden Valley Hospital, Deputy Labor Leader and Labor Health spokesperson Wayne Berry said today.

That was Mr Berry's press release of, as I said, about 10 days ago. Mr Berry was claiming that Woden Valley Hospital had carried out 2,095 fewer operations between March 1995 and February 1996 compared with the corresponding period 12 months earlier. Mr Berry demanded to know at that stage whether there were 2,000 fewer procedures, whether waiting lists had decreased and whether Calvary Hospital would

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