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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1434 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

I move the amendment that has been circulated in my name, which reads:

Paragraph (1), omit "details", substitute "documents provided to the Minister".

I think that makes it much clearer. I do not know that we have a definition anywhere in this place that suggests what a detail is. I think that the people in our hospitals and in our health system are providing very adequate data to this Assembly. In fact, Mr Speaker, they are providing more data than was ever provided before, by a country mile.

Ms McRae: Hiding.

Mr Berry: What are you hiding, Kate?

MRS CARNELL: Here we go. Ms McRae and Mr Berry say we are hiding something. Mr Speaker, how could we hide something when we have put it all on the record? What would those opposite have done, Mr Speaker, when they found out - they probably never would have found out because they never would have checked - that maybe the counting procedures were not right, as they were not with operations? What happened then? They did nothing, Mr Speaker. They just allowed the 3,000 phantom operations to float around the system.

The reality is that, under the accountability requirements that we have now, under the purchase agreements that are in place, all of those requirements, those checking mechanisms, are in place. The moment the department was aware of a problem, Mr Speaker, they presented a brief to me which ran through the issues involved and indicated that there had been counting problems.

Mr Berry: Does it record the screaming match between your office and the department?

MRS CARNELL: No. There has not been one; that is why. Did you scream at your department, Mr Berry? We do not, I have to tell you. Mr Speaker, this shows categorically what happened. This is the information that came to my office. I have no reason whatsoever to disbelieve it. What it shows, Mr Speaker, is that when the department found out that there were problems they corrected them and informed the Minister. Is that not good management, Mr Speaker? I think this is an appropriate approach. I do not believe that internal management documentation, or internal management information, is the sort of thing that should be tabled in an Assembly.

MR BERRY (5.38): Mr Speaker, I had hoped that we would not have taken so long on this; but, now that Mrs Carnell has been seen to be squirming so much, I am even more inquisitive as to what she seems to be squirming about. Mr Moore has raised with me the issue of how some of these details might identify officers. Mr Speaker, I seek leave to amend my motion by inserting after "details" the following words "excluding any information which may lead to the identification of any officer". Paragraph (1) will then read:

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