Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 4429 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Berry talks about cover-ups. Mr Speaker, all of these things are gazetted. They are in the Gazette. How can you possibly have a cover-up in the Gazette? How can you have a cover-up of something that has been the subject of exchanges of legal opinions with an Assembly committee chaired, let me say, by a member of the Opposition? How can this be a cover-up, Mr Speaker? This is just patently ridiculous. I come back to where I started, Mr Speaker. It is irresponsible in the extreme. It wastes the time of this place.

Mr Berry said that those opposite would support legislation to fix this up if that is what we need to do, but we will know whether legislation is needed only after we get legal advice. My advice from the Government Solicitor this morning is that he does not believe that there is a problem with Determination No. 227, but we will look at it again. We will do the appropriate thing. We will do what Ms Follett and her committee asked us to do, and that is seek another opinion. What we will not be doing is what Mr Berry attempted to do. He attempted but failed to make political capital out of what, let us be fair, is a difference of opinion by two lawyers who are qualified to give an opinion. Mr Berry has decided that he knows more. Rather than wait for our legal fraternity to determine which way to go in this particular situation or which legal opinion is right, Mr Berry - Mr Business, Mr Berry LLB, Mr Berry who knows more than the Government Solicitor, Mr Berry who knows more than Professor Whalan - decides that he is going to move for disallowance of millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars, dollars that go straight back into health, produce hospital beds, pay nurses, pay doctors and pay all of the people who run our health system. That is what he is doing this morning.

I think this Assembly should throw this motion straight out and allow the process that is already in place, which Ms Follett, the Government Solicitor and the department have already put in place, to sort out this situation. The fact is that it will be sorted out. We do have to make the fees that are in place appropriately legal. They may be legal now or they may not be. In one way or another we have to get it right, but this is not the way to go. One thing we can guarantee, Mr Speaker, is that going down a path that would put at risk millions of dollars' worth of taxpayers' dollars, of health dollars, is nothing more than Mr Berry playing political games with something in respect of which he has no qualifications. Mr Speaker, I rest my case.

MS FOLLETT (11.03): I think members will be aware that in addressing this motion I actually wear two hats. I would like to speak, first of all, as the chair of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, the committee which has raised the difficulty with the determinations which the Government has attempted to make. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee has traditionally operated and continues to operate in a non-party-political way. Indeed, as a committee we have not even addressed issues of policy. We confine ourselves to the detail and the technicalities of the legislation, the subordinate legislation, determinations and so on which pass through this place.

In looking at the determination of fees and charges which are the subject of debate today, the committee initially raised an insuperable problem with those determinations in that they were quite wrongly made. An error had been made, and that was pointed out to the Government. Despite attempts to remedy that error, it was the committee's view that there was again a technical difficulty with the determinations. We formed that view based on the advice of our expert adviser, Professor Whalan, a person of quite exceptional

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .