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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2013 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Mr Speaker, during the Estimates Committee process, we made a startling discovery about the intra-ocular lens implant equipment at the Canberra Hospital. Mrs Carnell has responded to that by saying, "We have fixed that by providing one for Calvary Hospital". That is to say that the major referral hospital in the ACT - our principal hospital - does not have one or has an unreliable one. It has an unreliable one that specialists do not want to use, according to Mrs Carnell's language in the Estimates Committee. So, Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell has been caught out over and over again.

Let us have a look at hospital waiting list reporting. There has been a report by Walter and Turnbull, which Mrs Carnell has refused to give members in this place. She claims that it would burn public servants. All I want to see is the information about why there has been miscounting in waiting lists in our public hospital system. Mrs Carnell's numbers on waiting lists cannot be relied upon, because this inquiry and report have blown out of the water her credibility in relation to waiting lists as well.

Mr Speaker, health management in the ACT has had a long history of contest in relation to it; but nowhere in the history of health budgets and health management in the ACT has there been such a long list of broken promises - - -

Mrs Carnell: Oh, rubbish!

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell interjects, "Oh, rubbish!". What about the health centres throughout the ACT? She was going to make sure that the health centres all worked. She promised the world to the community. She would say anything that came into her head to win. It did not matter whether it was never intended at all in the first place. The fact of the matter is that one health centre was bulldozed and attempts were made to sell two others. Both of them are still there because of action here in the ACT.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's first 10-minute period has expired. Do you want to use your second period?

MR BERRY: No. I just want an extension, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: You can use your second 10 minutes.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I seek leave for an extension. (Extension of time granted) Mr Speaker, here we have a situation where, clearly, at election time, the people of the ACT were misled in relation to health centres.

They were similarly misled in relation to salaried medical officers. One would have expected that in those health centres, which were going to be actively protected by Mrs Carnell, salaried community medical practitioners, who all bulk-billed, would have been retained in place. But, no; the minute Mrs Carnell came to office she danced to the AMA's tune and unloaded all the salaried community medical practitioners. Of course, that was, in effect, an attack on the bulk-billing of patients throughout the ACT, and it encouraged other doctors to abandon it, because those doctors did set a standard in the Territory in relation to the delivery of health care - that is, bulk-billed, low-cost, high-quality health care delivered to the people of the Australian Capital Territory.

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