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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1234 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

trying to get some sense back into negotiating contracts with the VMOs, Mrs Carnell threw her hands up in the air, knowing that it would cause her some bad publicity if she were to pursue the issue. She plainly gave in, and $3m per year of the community's money was lost.

By February 1996, less than six months after the first budget, the Assembly was asked to give the Health Minister another $14m and was given the impression that it would not cost one dollar more. Another promise broken! By June that first year the blow-out had hit $22.3m. Here we have the largest budget overspend since self-government, by the person who claimed at the last election that she would make significant changes to health in the ACT. About the only relief she provided was to Mr Gary Humphries, because her overspend was much worse than his. So, he can hand over the championship belt to Mrs Carnell.

In the second year of this famous three-year budget, Mrs Carnell tried to buy her way out of health problems. She ploughed an extra $38.6m into health. This is against a background of a promise to cut $10m per year from health budgets throughout the three-year budget. What a farce! What a hoax! It is starting to make the drop in waiting list numbers look pretty expensive. Meanwhile, Mrs Carnell had delivered only a few of the promised 50 extra beds at Woden Valley Hospital. That was a very quickly forgotten promise. Mrs Carnell made great hay out of the promise that she would deliver 50 extra beds to our public hospital system. She promised to deliver these hospital beds at Woden Valley, in fact. Nobody wants to go out there and count them these days. It is fairly clear that that promise has evaporated, and evaporated very quickly. It was a hollow and shallow con on the community and it will not be forgotten. The Carnell solution to all the problems that are created at Woden Valley Hospital - she promised to put 50 extra beds at Woden Valley Hospital - seems to be to change the name of it and then the promise does not matter anymore. Call it the Canberra Hospital, and we are on new and fertile ground to make a few more promises.

The promise not to close health centres was another casualty of the Carnell Government, and I have to say that Mr Hird's and Mr Stefaniak's approach to their electorate has been appalling. They have not been able to prevent the impact of the Carnell Government on health centres. In fact, it was only by way of a motion from the Labor Party, supported by other members in this Assembly, that the Kippax Health Centre was saved. I see now that the sign has been removed from the City Health Centre, so I suspect that we can put that down as another health centre that has been saved by Labor. The Melba one, regrettably, was bulldozed. The bulldozers were snuck out there and it was demolished. The Kippax Health Centre was saved only by prompt action from the Assembly, and I suspect that the Civic Health Centre has been saved, too, by the Assembly, as a result of a motion moved in this place by the Labor Party. They were promises that Mrs Carnell was forced to keep.

We now have the situation where the Liberals are again on an ideological binge, if you like, in relation to the assets of the Territory. I will speak briefly about that later on in relation to ACTEW. The cardio-thoracic unit was another example of the Health Minister's failure and her cavalier attitude to a promise. We heard about this particular service to the community in the lead-up to the last election. We saw the promises in the first budget. We see the promises in this budget. We await eagerly the

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