Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3915 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

that in any balancing that we are required to do individual liberties will be very much a part of the balance that we seek to achieve.

Hospital waiting lists

MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health, Mr Stanhope. I refer to a statement in the Assembly on Tuesday of last week disputing claims made by Mr Humphries on the anniversary of your government. You said, "Hospital waiting lists continue to increase. Well, they do not." The waiting lists for October for both hospitals were over 4,000 and increased by 246 for that month. Do you acknowledge that you misled the Assembly last week?

MR SPEAKER: Order! The imputation is that a member has misled the Assembly. You have to deal with that by way of a substantive motion, so I order you to withdraw that.

MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, I withdraw that. I respect that decision. Minister, do you acknowledge that there is an obvious inconsistency between your statement of last week and the waiting lists in October?

MR STANHOPE: I am more than happy, Mr Pratt, to have a look at what I said. I cannot recall exactly what I said or the context in which I said it. When I said it, I certainly was not aware what the October waiting lists were going to be. Certainly two weeks ago the September waiting lists were available to me. I am sure from the numbers I have in front of me that the September waiting lists showed a decline. I think that is why I did not get a question on the waiting lists in that sitting week. At that stage the waiting lists had gone down from the previous month. It is not much of a story when waiting lists drop. It is all about Sherlock Holmes and the dog that barked. What was so peculiar about that? The peculiarity was the dog did not bark. It is the same here. The waiting lists went down in September and the dogs did not bark.

Mr Pratt, I am more than happy to have a look at what I said. If I did in some way inadvertently mislead the house-and heaven forbid that I did-I will correct the record.

Rugby World Cup

MS MacDONALD: My question is to the minister for sport and recreation, Mr Quinlan. Minister, you recently launched the ACT government's 10-month campaign for the 2003 Rugby World Cup. Can you inform the Assembly of the name of the campaign and the expected benefits the 2003 Rugby World Cup will generate for the ACT?

MR QUINLAN: I thank Ms MacDonald. Members will be aware of the campaign that Ms MacDonald ran at the beginning of the year, "Wanna See a Wallaby". Although we will not be seeing Wallabies at our World Cup matches, I am sure that that campaign had something to do with the quality of games we will see.

It is now apparent that we will have games featuring Wales and probably games featuring Italy as well as one of the Pacific island nations. As members will be aware, rugby union has been one of the success stories in Canberra sport over the past eight years. That is based on our outstanding success at Super 12, but we should not forget the success of the Vikings, so much so that they were thrown out of the Sydney competition.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .