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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1863 ..

Ms Follett: Where?

MR HUMPHRIES: They were published by the Woden Valley Hospital in their information bulletins, in their regular publications that were published by the hospital. They were published. Mr Berry does not recall that fact. Perhaps he needs to go back and check his own records as to what was going on at that stage in the hospital. Mr Berry published those figures and is responsible for the inaccuracy of them. Day after day, he came into this place and went on television and accused Mrs Carnell of misleading the Assembly and the community about the performance of our hospital system.

Members will recall, if they have followed this matter, a little bit of the history of the matter. In the first couple of years of self-government, in this place the test that was applied regularly as to the success or failure of our hospital system was waiting lists. Mr Berry and I, as health spokesmen for our respective parties, constantly tussled on the question of waiting lists. Mr Berry much excoriated me for increases in the waiting lists - relatively minor ones, I might say - during the 18 months that I was Minister for Health between 1989 and 1991. After I left office in 1991 there was a precipitous rise in the waiting lists in the public hospital system. In fact, in the space of another year or year and a half, the number of people waiting for surgery in our public hospitals doubled, under Mr Berry. When that happened, rather than use waiting lists as a test of success or failure of the hospital system, Mr Berry, as Minister for Health, discontinued talking about waiting lists altogether. In fact, he claimed repeatedly in this place that waiting lists were not an accurate measure of how well our public hospital system was doing. He said that there was a different measure which was a test of how well our public hospital system was doing. What was that test? The test was throughput.

Mr Berry came into this place repeatedly and told this house, this Assembly, that under his Government throughput was increasing; and that, although waiting lists were going up, although the budget was blowing out, as it was every year - although all those things were happening - there was one overwhelming redeeming factor in the way the hospital system was operating, and that was that throughput was increasing. Mr Berry was reluctant to table the figures in a clear form. Mr Berry at that stage, do not forget, was tabling quarterly reports - only quarterly reports - on the hospital system, rather than the monthly reports that this Government is now producing and the fuller figures that it is now producing.

The fact is that Mr Berry repeatedly made the claim in this place that throughput through the hospital system was increasing, but that was not true. It was not true because the hospital throughput was being double-counted.

Opposition members interjected.

MR HUMPHRIES: Day procedures were being double-counted. There was a total of 3,749 additional operations carried out at Woden Valley Hospital, according to Mr Berry, which, in fact, were never carried out. They were in figures produced under Mr Berry. This Government has not been in the business of producing figures for periods when it was not in office. It is not in the business of producing figures for periods when it was not in office.

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