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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (21 April) . . Page.. 1067 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the level of ignorance about these proposals is quite extraordinary, but there is not just ignorance but hypocrisy as well, because the idea of outsourcing government legal services was not one that originated in this Government. In fact, to be frank, the ACT Government is one of the last governments in Australia to move on the outsourcing of legal services. One of the first governments to do that was the Keating Government in 1992. More specifically, it was the Attorney-General in that Government, one Mr Michael Lavarch. That name may ring a distant bell to Mr Stanhope because Mr Lavarch's adviser, chief of staff indeed, was one Jon Stanhope.

Mr Stanhope: And a very good adviser, too.

MR HUMPHRIES: If you do say so yourself.

MR SPEAKER: And a modest one at that, I think, Mr Stanhope.

MR HUMPHRIES: Who was privatising legal services at that stage in the Commonwealth? None other than Mr Lavarch, aided and abetted by Mr Stanhope. So what, exactly, is the problem, Mr Stanhope, in doing in 1998 what you were doing back in 1994 and 1995? I think absolutely nothing. If we want talk about hypocrisy, it is pretty clearly in evidence in opportunistic press releases like this one.

MR BERRY: My question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care, Mr Moore. Minister, are you aware of a letter published in the Canberra Times of 19 April from Dr Philip Cumpston in relation to anaesthetic and intensive care services at Canberra Hospital? Do you share Dr Cumpston's concern that these services have been seriously run down and too great a load has been put on the remaining specialist staff? If so, what have you done about it?

MR MOORE: I am aware of the letter. Indeed, I am also aware that Mr Rayment has prepared for the Canberra Times a response to that letter. There is no doubt that the previous director of the intensive care unit is unhappy with some of the changes that are proposed for the intensive care unit. But there has been, and there need to be, some administrative and managerial changes at the Canberra Hospital to both the intensive care unit and the anaesthesia and pain management unit to obtain best practice levels in both quality of service and management.

It is true that change in the directorships of both positions is needed. It is occurring in the case of anaesthesia and it will occur in the case of the intensive care unit. These decisions are not being made in isolation by the medical director of surgical services. The decisions have also been ratified by the executive of the hospital, and that does conflict with one of the issues raised in that letter, Mr Berry. Recruitment is under way for both positions and both jobs will be oriented differently. People accessing these services at the Canberra Hospital do not need to be concerned as there certainly will not be a decrease in the quality of the service that they will receive. They will, in fact,

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