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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3761 ..

Mr Osborne: No; you said "the most disadvantaged".

MS TUCKER: Yes. They are seen to be the most disadvantaged by major reports in Australia, including that of Professor Yeatman. The point has been made by both of those reports that services are unacceptably rationed. So there is an issue there that I think you probably do not understand.

Mr Humphries made a few points, and I have to clarify one. Mr Humphries was very surprised because he could not see mental health in my motion. The point is that this motion is not about just mental health. That is why it is not specifically in the motion. It makes sense that it is not highlighted especially. The point I made when I proposed initially to put this motion of want of confidence was about the cumulative effect, about a number of events that have happened since I have been in the place and watched this Minister manage health. It is not about just mental health.

I would like to clarify something quickly for Mr Moore because I believe that he has misunderstood what I said. In the quote you gave, Mr Moore, I was referring specifically to the mental health figures only. I have my speech here and I said, directly after referring to the mental health figures, "I am sure Mrs Carnell has been very clever in making sure she has never quite overstepped the mark; but, quite frankly, I am fed up", and so on. That was referring to the mental health figures.

Mr Moore: Which is where you were saying she was misleading.

MS TUCKER: No; that is when I was talking about mental health figures. Where I say that she has definitely misled, and basically I think she acknowledged it, was when she was referring to the fact that this nursing agency does not employ just nurses, this nursing agency sends all sorts of people out to jobs. That, I believe, is a mislead. To anyone who read that transcript, it is pretty obvious that the implication is that this service is able to employ nurses more cheaply than they can pay their carers, and Mrs Carnell does indeed have very different advice from my advice on that issue. I have spoken to three separate managers in these houses, who have said that they get untrained people from Michelle's Nursing Agency. Mrs Carnell claims her advice is that everyone from that agency is trained. We obviously have two different sets of advice there, and that will be clarified, hopefully. In terms of the way she used the nursing agency and its title in her speech, the implication definitely was that it was so expensive to employ these staff in the houses and they could get nurses cheaper. I stand by that, and I believe that it is a mislead.

I was trying to make the point about why I am not focusing so much on that aspect, and this is once again a typical example of how Mrs Carnell will misrepresent - maybe she was not listening carefully. When I said, "Do not bother picking up your pens to see where we have caught the Minister out", it was not because she could not be caught out. The point I was making was that that is not what this motion is about. This motion is about what is the underlying problem in health. Yes, there is a mislead, but this is a symptom. I was trying to make the point that we do not have to look at this particular symptom as the major issue of this motion. Mrs Carnell was very upset, because she said, "This is an unusual process. You do not put want of confidence motions because a whole system is not functioning properly". Why not? I would have thought that was a major issue. I want to know why we do not have this area being managed properly.

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