Page 2653 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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hospital crisis had been a fizzer. It did not strike me that that was the case. I have certainly seen evidence in the last few days of the Government sweating quite hard on this question. It is the kind of issue that I think governments do not like to have to face. I saw the headline in today's Canberra Times which said, "Government acts to shore up Berry". My understanding of what "shoring up" means is that you shore up something which is crumbling, and "crumbling" implies to me that there is something structurally wrong with whatever you are trying to shore up. But I have to say that this Minister's approach on hospitals needs a great deal of shoring up because it does not have much to sustain it.
Mr Speaker, we have to address these problems; they are urgent. They are not things we can leave dangling for some weeks or months to come. The Minister has been unable to indicate when he will make a decision on this, except that he hopes it will before the end of this month. I should point out that, according to our present schedule, this house rises on 14 December, and I have to wonder whether the Minister would not prefer to make a decision after that date when the accountability of the Minister to this house is no longer there, or at least not for two months.
Mr Jensen: Shades of WA Inc.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed.
Mr Kaine: It could be reconvened.
MR HUMPHRIES: It will be reconvened, Mr Kaine, if we find the decision is made after that date and that it is not the kind of decision that is compatible with good management. We have to face up to this problem. This Government sits on its hands and refuses to do anything. I think it is time for this Assembly to send the unmistakable message to the Government that any other system is not acceptable, that we have to have a strong management system in our hospitals, and that means acting now. It means sending a clear message and telling the people who are getting on with the job in that board of directors that they are pursuing a course of action which is proper and appropriate and they are doing their job.
MR COLLAERY (3.23): The Rally said yesterday, and I will repeat it, that the Rally is not going to comment on the composition of the interim board as it stands now or the future composition of any board that the Minister may appoint. That is the position the Rally has taken. We have thought carefully about the position of the interim board. Our view is that this board by all appearances appears to have identified matters of serious financial concern. Without judging the issue either way, it is very clear that this Assembly can take a number of courses. Firstly, the Public Accounts Committee unilaterally, under its power to take its own references, could take this matter away and sit through the Christmas period. I am
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