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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1872 ..

MRS CARNELL: Mr Berry put out a press release saying - - -

Ms McRae: You cannot table it. You do not have it. You do not know. You do not care.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Members of the Opposition will have the opportunity to defend their colleague, or perhaps their colleague might like to defend himself, at some time in the future. I suggest that up until then they cease interrupting.

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Dr Hughes made it very clear this morning on radio that when the press release of Mr Berry was produced a couple of weeks ago I went to the department and said, "Maybe Mr Berry has a point here. This does look very strange. It does look as though we are doing fewer operations than was the case under Mr Berry. But our waiting lists are going down. Our waiting times are improving. We are certainly spending the money to treat these people. What is happening here?". As Dr Hughes very rightly said this morning, he went away and investigated. This was after Mr Berry's press release. Remember that he was not in charge of the hospital at the time. He went and investigated, and what did he find? He found that for that 13-month period day surgery had been double-counted - 3,749 phantom operations had been counted and published in statistics that were available for Woden Valley Hospital. That is what he found out.

The reality is quite contrary to what was said by those opposite - that we had known about this for a long time. The fact is that we did not know at all until after Mr Berry put out his press release. In fact, nor did the people in the department or, for that matter, Dr Hughes, because none of them were actually here when Mr Berry was performing, shall we say, the double-counting trick. So, how would they have known? But, going backwards, having a look at the figures that were published during those times, we found out that there was a deception, and we found out why our figures were not looking terribly good when we compared them with figures produced under Mr Berry. The reason why our figures were not looking very good is that Mr Berry's figures were simply wrong. When you actually look at our figures, they show categorically that we have done some 1,300 extra operations, not the 2,000 fewer.

To get back to the issue of censure, Mr Berry has to understand that he must be judged and this Assembly must be consistent when it comes to censure motions. The Assembly has taken very definite views on censure motions of recent months. The view was that, regardless of whether or not you may have known about a particular issue - whether it be the issue of the model that was used for the VMOs under the previous Government or, for that matter, whether it be health blow-outs - - - (Extension of time granted) This Assembly has determined that, if the Minister was responsible during that period of time, then that Minister should be censured if there were inconsistencies, if things like models for VMOs disputes were not appropriate.

But Mr Berry, when he was Health Minister, actually went on about the very clear picture, which I spoke about, that he believed that this Assembly was given of what was actually happening in the hospital at that time. He said time and time again that he was making information available that throughput was up. There are any number of quotes in Hansard of Mr Berry saying, "Throughput is up. Things are on track".

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