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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4958 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

In conclusion, I hope that the findings of the report and the response from the Government do not get lost but that whoever is in government next year - and I know which government I would like to see - listens to the consumers who use the services and takes their views into account.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (4.10): For the information of members, I present the Government's response to the report of the Select Committee on the Establishment of a New Private Hospital, which was presented to the Assembly on 13 November 1997. I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

There are times when committees make a real contribution to analysis and policy development which substantially assists the Government in providing better services to the people of the ACT. These committees vindicate the time and effort members of this Assembly put into such endeavours. In these circumstances we rise above party politics and consider what is best for the ACT. The Social Policy Committee, in producing the report we have just commented on, is one example. I regret to say that the Select Committee on the Establishment of a New Private Hospital does not fit into this category. The report is in the category of time wasters, fuzzy thinking and biased conclusions resulting in a set of weak recommendations which either ask us to do what the committee was supposed to do in the first place or suggest action which has already occurred or is in the pipeline.

The chair, Mr Berry, made no secret of his personal philosophy - no more private hospitals. He seems to prefer that we use scarce public health dollars to support the private sector or that we continue to subsidise private patients' use of public health facilities. I find Mr Berry's hypocrisy on the development of this hospital absolutely breathtaking. The Government notes the numerous times that the chair has argued against the expansion of the private hospital care sector, including the time his opposition led to the quashing of a private hospital development in 1991. The Government questions his capacity to have objectively chaired this committee. Possibly, the most telling comments were made by Mr Berry on 8 May 1997, the day he introduced the terms of reference of this committee, when he should have been demonstrating some objectivity. He claimed, "We are better off", even though the ACT has 0.7 private beds per 1,000 patients, when the national average is 1.2. Minutes later, when I was explaining the impact of the private bed shortfall on the ACT population, he said:

Rubbish! We are better off than the rest of Australia already. We do not need any more of them.

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