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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1877 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the figures which were provided to me and which I routinely provided were, as I have said, in quarterly reports. They related to admissions, occupied bed days, outpatient occasions of service, available beds, waiting lists and, of course, separations. Separations include the whole range of people that leave hospital in one way or another; for instance, same-day and long-term people who are in the hospital system. Mr Speaker, as I said a moment ago, if there is something wrong with those figures of some years ago I would be happy to apologise for them; but no claim has been made in respect of the figures that I have presented in this place time after time. Mr Speaker, I never provided monthly figures in this place and I never made the claims that Mrs Carnell has made about her figures.

Mrs Carnell is the one who crowed about these monthly reports - how much better she was than Labor by producing these monthly reports for this Assembly. Mr Speaker, I reserve the right to take them at face value. I reserve the right, as a member of this Assembly, to regard those figures as gospel. I think members on the crossbenches would consider them as gospel as well. Even the Government should be able to regard those figures as gospel. They were provided from February 1995 and relate to Woden Valley Hospital only. The operations statistics first appeared in those monthly reports. Using the statistics provided by Mrs Carnell, I was able to come to the conclusion that fewer operations were being done in 1995-96 than in 1994-95. Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell is getting stuck into me, but the press release relates to the 1994-95 year. I was not around long in that year, as I recall, as Health Minister. In fact, on the figures provided by Mrs Carnell, the only conclusion that you can come to is the one that I came to in my press release.

I took an interest in the figures in March this year, when I became Labor's health spokesperson on the resignation of Mr Connolly. In the February figures I noticed that the 1995 operations were showing that fewer operations had been done than in the corresponding period in the previous year. When the March figures arrived in May, I checked and, sure enough, the same trend was there - 7.8 per cent down in main theatre and 15.7 per cent down in day theatre. I immediately asked for the previous figures, went back through to the first figures from February last year and did some sums. Anybody could have done that.

Now Mrs Carnell says that the figures she had supplied for the previous year were wrong, and she blames me for it. Mrs Carnell, if they were wrong and they were my doing at the time, I would have adjusted them. Mr Speaker, it is her job, as Minister, to ensure that the information she puts before this Assembly is correct. Of course, Mrs Carnell did not do that. Mrs Carnell suggests that Mr Connolly and I may have deliberately double-counted the figures to create the impression of more surgery being done at Woden Valley Hospital. Mr Speaker, I could suggest that Mrs Carnell is trying to find a new formula on the figures to make her performance look good.

Mr Speaker, we can all play around with the numbers here; but the fact is that the evidence that was put in my press release and has been the basis of all of my comments in relation to this matter has been based on the figures that have been produced by Mrs Carnell in her monthly reports, which were placed before this place as gospel. Mrs Carnell, if Mr Connolly and I had cooked the books, do you not think we might have used the figures for some useful purpose?

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