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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1994 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

All it can be is more taxes. Maybe they support Mr Moore on the bed tax. At least Mr Moore had the guts to come up with a tax that he would increase. I disagree with him totally. Maybe those opposite agree and maybe they might like to tell us.

MR BERRY (4.41): I would like to talk about a Chief Minister who is prepared to say anything that comes into her head, even if it has no relationship to the truth, to present an image out there in the community. She went through a few reminders for us about why we do not support the way her Government operates. She said that the new private hospital will create 200 jobs. I trust that she will listen to me now. Where do you think the 200 jobs are going to get their business from? They are going to get their business from the other hospitals and the public system.

Mrs Carnell: No, they are not. They will get it from the region.

MR BERRY: There are going to be sicker people here in the ACT - more business! There is going to be more throughput because we build a private hospital! Does it mean that our health costs are going to go up because we have a private hospital? This is a joke. The 200 jobs will take business from somewhere else. They will take it out of either the public system or the other two private hospitals. Do not try that one on us.

The ACT community is not going to become sicker overnight just to fill your private hospital. They are not going to break legs and wear out hips and knees just to fill your private hospital. There are not going to be hundreds of extra people for your cardio-thoracic unit. Only a small proportion of them can be looked after in your private hospital. That is if people are prepared to take out expensive private insurance or borrow or pay - - -

Mrs Carnell: Thirty-seven per cent have it now.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell interjects that 37 per cent have it now. By implication I think she is saying, "We will force them into the private hospital". That is what that means. Of course, once you force them in there, you force them out of the public system, which means that jobs there will go. Do not try on us that furphy that there will be 200 extra jobs in the private hospital. The 200 extra jobs in the private hospital will be taking business from the other hospitals. Let us not kid ourselves. Mrs Carnell went on to mention all of the things she is doing that Labor opposed. One of the glaring absences from the issues she raised was the $3m extra that she paid to the doctors. We would have gladly supported her if she had not paid it. Mrs Carnell failed to mention that. Of course, she was censured for misleading us on that, and she would not want to remind the Assembly about that.

It is a pattern that Mrs Carnell seems to have developed. She raised the Jindalee Nursing Home issue. That nursing home was given away for the price of a decent three-bedroom house. Mrs Carnell brags that because we are out of nursing home care in the ACT things are on the improve, that standards have improved. What she really does is demean her own position by the admission that other people can run it better. "I could not run it, so I gave it to the private sector to run", says Mrs Carnell. Mrs Carnell makes the big admission, "I could not handle the thing. I had to flick pass it.

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