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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1886 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

because they might have been wrong, somehow that is censurable. That is what he is saying. The amendment would indicate that, by republishing figures that were published under a previous government, that somehow is a censurable matter. That is, obviously, patently ridiculous, Mr Speaker.

Members interjected.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I thought those opposite were getting somewhat precious about being interrupted a few minutes ago.

MR SPEAKER: Yes. I uphold your complaint. Both sides seem to amuse themselves by interjecting when the other side is speaking. I remind everybody that Mrs Carnell has the floor at the moment.

MRS CARNELL: So, Mr Speaker, I would hope that everybody in this house would accept that figures produced under a Minister are that Minister's responsibility - end of deal; no ifs or buts. The figures that we are talking about now in Mr Whitecross's amendment were produced under the previous Labor Government - under Mr Connolly and Mr Berry as Ministers at that time. Therefore, they are their responsibility.

I come back to the case I made earlier. It has been made quite clear in this place by all of those on the crossbenches that they believed, in the way they voted on previous censure motions, that, if a Minister uses or publishes particular figures, then that Minister is responsible for his or her actions. This Assembly determined that, because I used a model for working out VMO salaries from a previous government without questioning that model and speaking about the outcomes of that model - by doing that alone - I was censurable. If that is the case, Mr Berry is certainly censurable in this case. But to suggest for one moment that a new government is somehow responsible for an old government's figures is patently bottom-line ridiculous.

In terms of when we knew about this situation, I think Dr Hughes made it very clear on radio this morning. Dr Hughes was quite definite. He said that he had no knowledge of this situation, that his executive had no knowledge of this situation, until he was asked to investigate it as a response to Mr Berry's press release. We asked him to have a look at it because our figures look fine. They are the ones that I am responsible for. They are the ones that I am working on. Our figures show that waiting lists are down. Our figures show that waiting times have been reduced. Our figures also show that we have a budget problem. All of those things I am totally responsible for, and I will not back away from it. Dr Hughes, though, was asked to do something fairly unusual, and that was to look at figures that had been produced under a previous government. He went away and obviously spoke to some people in his area. Dr Hughes said this morning that he went away and made investigations and found that double-counting had occurred for some 13 months - 3,749 operations that were documented as having occurred simply did not occur. That is what Dr Hughes said this morning.

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