Page 2904 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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not being here. Having agreed to my not being here, having agreed to my absence, they then, for an hour, I am informed, proceed to attack me directly for my failure to be here to respond to a motion which they moved without notice in circumstances in which they knew I would not be here.
It is duplicitous and discourteous, but it also goes to the very point that I think Dr Foskey has made well as to the rationale and the credibility of a motion such as this moved against me today. They knew that I would not be here. They then moved a motion against me in my absence and attacked me for not being here. How dishonourable is that?
Then, in the attack, knowing that I would not be here, they attacked me personally for an apparent want of courage or confidence in myself to be here to respond to the motion attacking me. It goes, I think, to two things—the seriousness with which we should take this motion and the honour and the courage of the opposition in deliberately choosing a moment to attack me personally by formally alleging a want of competence when they knew I would not be here.
It raises some interesting questions about the Liberal Party and the Leader of the Opposition that the Leader of the Opposition chooses this moment to attack me as the Chief Minister when he knows that I will not be present. So much for courage; so much for honour; so much for the credibility of this particular motion! It illustrates just how political, how mindless and how nonsensical is this particular motion today—this motion of grave concern as to my competence as Chief Minister and that of my government.
This government has a proud record of achievement in health, as it does across all areas of government service delivery. This year we will expend somewhere in the order of $800 million on the provision of health services to the people of the ACT. That is a significant increase from just under $500 million when we came to government. We have increased expenditure on health services for the people of the ACT by in the order of $300 million over the last six years.
We have dramatically increased support for people with mental health concerns. Under the Liberal Party, we, the most well-off and most affluent community in Australia, spent less on a per capita basis on mental health than any other jurisdiction in Australia. We have righted that wrong. We have more than doubled expenditure on mental health services since coming to government.
We have, in our six years in government, replaced the 114 beds that the Liberal Party closed. The two Liberal Party health ministers, Kate Carnell and Michael Moore, closed 114 beds in government. It actually puts in some stark relief, does it not, the posturing of the last week in relation to a tragic incident in accident and emergency that the immediate response of the Liberal Party is to demand the reinstatement of 100 acute care beds. The demand by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Minister for Health that the government immediately increase the number of acute care beds by 100 over the next year shows a lack of self-awareness. They do not acknowledge or mention the fact that, in government, they closed 114 beds.
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