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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2365 ..

Mr Moore: Yes, but its sitting fees were a minor part.

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, he made much issue of it. Now he says there should be two more representatives on the board, or at least he is about to, I take it, on the basis of an amendment he is going to move to his own amendment. I would say to members opposite that you are elevating, particularly, the TLC to a privileged position which others do not have there. If, for arguments sake, the Government had people on it, as Mr Berry suggested, from places like the 250 Club, I am sure that they would not survive a change of government, and who represents the other side of politics when the government changes and the TLC rep stays on there but the other people come off? Who represents that? Obviously nobody, Mr Speaker. This is a silly amendment and it also runs counter to what Mrs Carnell said about this structure, which ought to be taken to heart.

Mr Berry: It mentions trade unions. That is the trouble.

MR HUMPHRIES: No. This is not about putting people from different representative interest groups on this structure. It is about getting the best structure to drive the Health and Community Care Service. If we start stacking it with people because of their sectional interest we are going to be in trouble.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (6.48): Mr Speaker, one of the things I did forget to tell Mr Moore is that the chief executive of community care is on the board. The two chief executives of the hospital and community care are there.

MR KAINE (6.48): Mr Speaker, I have listened patiently to the debate. In particular, I listened carefully to what Mr Berry said. What seems to have escaped people in this debate is the fact that the management of our health system has not been effective, certainly during the time of self-government. It has not been effective, demonstrably. Budgets have blown out year after year. Waiting lists have extended year after year. There have been disputes with VMOs. There have been disputes with everybody. The system has not worked. What the Government is trying to do is set up a system of management that will work. What is envisaged in this Bill is a management board of experts who are capable of running the organisation.

Mr Moore earlier today spoke quite strongly about not setting up a representative board, and he had some very good reasons for not doing so in connection with the betting corporatisation. His arguments were persuasive. They are even more persuasive here because if we set up one of those representative boards that we have been experimenting with for the last 15 to 20 years what we are doing is setting up a board which itself is going to be confrontationist, and within it there will be conflict because the representatives will not be seeing themselves as being there to provide a cohesive management board but to represent the interests of the people who put them there. In other words, you are setting up a situation where the board itself is going to spend more time arguing within itself about what it should do and whose interests it should represent when, in fact, it is there to represent only one group of people, the consumers of the services that this service provides.

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