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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2340 ..

Mrs Carnell: Why? Because they are too accountable?

MR BERRY: We have ensured that Ministers are accountable here. Mrs Carnell says it is because they are too accountable. It is because we have established a different program here in the ACT so that Ministers remain responsible. No matter how they struggle to dig themselves hiding places at the expense of the community, the Labor Party and I and others in this place will keep our eye on you and prevent you from doing it.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (5.09): Mr Speaker, I have heard a tirade from Mr Berry this afternoon, but we have heard pitifully little actual evidence of the problem with the board of health system. We have heard no evidence of a problem with the board of health system. Mr Berry, who now again leaves his seat and marches away - he does not like to take the heat on what he has just had to say - has described the board of health concept as a relic of the past. I have to say that that is a pretty poor reflection on those individuals in our community who have chosen to serve on those boards in the past and who, in my view - and I speak as a former Minister for Health - have done a good job on those boards. They have included a number of people who have had significant experience and have brought great talent and knowledge of health to those boards. I think this is a most unfortunate reflection. If Mr Berry were here, I would think about asking him to withdraw the reflection on those who have served on those bodies.

Mr Berry no doubt has a very bitter taste in his mouth about boards of health. He inherited an interim board of health in 1989, and one of the earliest crises that an ACT government had to face was the problem of the conflict between his board and himself. The Government was launched into a fairly significant crisis early in its life by the fact that Mr Berry basically shut the board out of deliberations and ended up with quite significant conflict which caused huge damage to the health system. The board's concern at the time, understandably, was that the budget was blowing out. They sought assistance from Mr Berry to contain the cost of that budget blow-out and Mr Berry, as I recall, was not particularly amenable to helping them. Mr Speaker, having that personal history of conflict with the Board of Health is not in itself a good reason to can the concept of a board managing the day-to-day activities of our hospital system. Mr Berry's personal dislike of the concept is a good reason for him, but not a good reason for the rest of this Assembly, to remove the advantages which a board of health imposes.

Mr Berry: A big help to you, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: Frankly, the Board of Health was a help to me. The Board of Health was good because it was a board against which to sound out certain concepts, with which to test the propositions that you wanted to put about the way in which the system should be run. It brought together people with day-to-day responsibility for management of issues within the health system. That was of value, Mr Speaker.

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