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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1873 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

He claimed consistently that increased day surgery at Woden Valley Hospital gave a capacity for beds to be closed, and that was his excuse for cutting some 200 beds out of the hospital. The fact is that we now know that day surgery was being double-counted, Mr Speaker. Even by Mr Berry's standards, that has to be a major stuff-up. There is just no other way of looking at it. If there was a major stuff-up when Mr Berry was Minister, then, by his own standards, by this Assembly's standards, he must be censured.

We also have the situation that, under him as the responsible Minister at the time, waiting lists were blowing through the roof. There were problems with budgets. If you or anybody here were in the position as Minister, with waiting lists going up exponentially at the time, with budgets blowing out, would you not ask to see the surgery throughput figures - figures that actually existed, figures that were published within the hospital? I heard Mr Berry on radio this morning say, "Nobody ever showed them to me". Quite honestly, if Mr Berry, in a time of waiting lists blowing out, people ending up waiting longer and longer for surgery, and budgets blowing out, did not ask to see what the throughput of surgery was in his major hospital, then I think he needs to be censured on that point, let alone for double-counting day surgery. Those are words out of Mr Berry's own mouth. He said, "I did not have the figures. I did not ask for them. Nobody showed them to me". We could believe that, or we could believe that they were double-counted and Mr Berry knew about it. In either of those circumstances, using the standards that this Assembly has chosen to use for me and for this Government, this Assembly must choose to censure Mr Berry as well.

There are certain things that are absolutely categorical here, Mr Speaker. One is that double-counting of day surgery occurred between November 1993 and December 1994. There is no doubt that that happened. There is no doubt that those figures were available and published at Woden Valley Hospital at the time. There is no doubt at all about that. There is no doubt that Mr Berry told this Assembly that we had all of the information that was available at Woden Valley Hospital to create a very clear picture, as I said, so that everyone could judge how well he was doing. I will also quote a statement from Hansard of 12 October 1993 where Mr Berry said:

No other State provides the level of information that is provided here in the ACT, and the Labor Government, for one, provides accurate information.

Mr Speaker, it is in Hansard - "the Labor Government, for one, provides accurate information"; more information than anyone else, and accurate information. It is interesting to see what Mr Berry said when he went on with that statement on 12 October. He said:

I have demonstrated, right across the board, that the public hospital system is performing much better in all respects.

Again, Mr Speaker, that has proved not to be the case. The one area in which it was performing very well, if figures have anything to do with it, was waiting lists, because they were going up really very quickly at that time. It would appear, if we are to believe Mr Berry, that he allowed waiting lists to go up exponentially and did not actually ask, nor was he told, what was actually happening in surgery at Woden Valley Hospital.

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