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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3718 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the fact of the matter is, as just about everybody in this place except Mr Berry knows, that there are no clashing meetings of Health Ministers and Ministers attending the COAG meeting. If you had bothered to check, Mr Berry, before you issued your press release, making another stupid and groundless allegation, you would have discovered that the meeting of Health Ministers was on this morning and the preliminary meetings of COAG are on this afternoon. So, as a result, there was no clash and the Chief Minister was able to represent the ACT very adequately at both meetings.

In fact, one of the significant issues being discussed at COAG tomorrow is the Medicare agreement. The fact that the Chief Minister is also the Minister for Health and Community Care means that she goes to that meeting better armed than just about anybody else at that meeting. I would have thought that that is a very good reason for our Chief Minister also to be Minister for Health. Mr Berry says in this press release:

No other State or Territory Leader also holds other heavy portfolios. Mrs Carnell's demand to be Chief Minister and Treasurer as well as Health Minister has been disastrous for the ACT with health costs being left uncontrolled.

No other State or Territory has just four Ministers. This coming weekend alone I was originally scheduled to be at six different ministerial meetings at three different locations - two in Queenstown in New Zealand, two in Adelaide and two in Canberra. As it happens, they have all fallen over and I am not supposed to be anywhere. I am going to have a weekend off.

Mr Berry: You will do us a lot less harm.

MR HUMPHRIES: If you issue a few less press releases like this, Mr Berry, we will all be better off, will we not?

Mr Berry: That gives me an idea - "Gary Humphries not going; you are in luck".

MR HUMPHRIES: I suppose it would be almost impossible to expect Mr Berry to abstain in these circumstances. The thing about this press release that really gets me, though, is this final paragraph. It says this:

I have already signalled Labor's intention to separate the responsibilities of health and treasury under a Labor Government.

The question remains, Mr Speaker: Who would be health spokesperson under a Labor government? It would not be Mr Berry, of course, because he has had that poisoned chalice before. No, no, no, thank you very much; he would stay well away from that one. So whom would he give it to? Mr Whitecross perhaps - Minister for Health, Mr Whitecross? That would be great revenge for taking $27,000 out of the overtime budget, Mr Berry. Would you not agree? I do not know, frankly, that a budget blow-out like that in the health portfolio would be very helpful for the ACT. We know what kind of trouble the health budgets have been in in the past. We would not want to have that revisited because of someone like Mr Whitecross. Mr Stanhope perhaps? I think he would make a very good Health Minister. Do you not agree, Ms McRae? He would make a very good Health Minister.

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