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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (14 October) . . Page.. 3147 ..
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I really have to ask for - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order, please! Look, for the last two days there have been constant interjections. I will not tolerate them again. Somebody is going to be warned. Who wants to be the first?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, only Mr Quinlan and maybe his colleagues could possibly believe that the Territory was actually in some kind of healthy financial position in accrual terms when they left office in 1995. The actuarial assessment we had done on our accrual accounting initial position was checked independently. We had actuarial assessments to that effect at the time. They indicated that that was an accurate picture of what the ACT was experiencing at the time - a $344m operating loss. If Mr Quinlan believes that some other figure is more accurate, I suggest that he put it forward.
MR OSBORNE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health. As I did yesterday, I did give him some notice of the question. I will read from a letter that I received today, Mr Moore. It was addressed to Mr Rayment, Chief Executive Officer of the Canberra Hospital, and it says:
Dear Mr Rayment
I am writing to you concerning the organisation of medical imaging under general anaesthetic for children.
CT scans are organised once a month for 4 children only. What concerns me as a parent of a child requiring several CT scans this year to treat his rare benign tumour of the jaw, is the time of day that these scans are organised for. Children must completely fast from 7.00 am on the morning of their scan, to be admitted at 11.30 am for a list that starts at 1.00 pm. My nearly 5 year old son, as one of the oldest children on his list, will be done later, meaning that he will have to completely fast for seven hours during which time he will be awake the whole time.
I have been unable to gain any explanation as to why these procedures for children occur in the afternoon. Please explain to me why the routine bookings of these scans under anaesthetic cannot be organised for an early morning timeslot?
It is extremely difficult to continuously explain to a very young child that they cannot eat or drink, particularly if they can see their siblings doing so. It is very difficult to amuse a small child with activities that
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