Page 2655 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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It looks interesting, because everywhere that persons are affected, where there could be a reaction, the savings seem far less proportionally than to the inanimate heads of expenditure. It is quite interesting. I have not put it around, Mr Minister, because it might cause undue panic to wage earners at the hospital and the rest, but there are other things there that I could comment on. I have not mentioned other categories there.
Interestingly, there is a heading "Creche" where $166,000 is set aside as the target, just for Royal Canberra, and the Government is going to save - I cannot read it - $1,000 or $2,100 a month. I do not get it.
A member: Or millions, perhaps.
MR COLLAERY: Well, you would not be saving millions, because you would be cancelling child-care there too, as well as increasing all the other problems child-care has in the Territory at the moment, and federally. The Rally supports the establishment of a board. As for the details, set out in pages 40 and 41 of the Kearney report, we have a few items we quibble with but the Rally agrees with the general representativeness of it across the board. I will not repeat it all; people can read it at page 41.
We saw the interim board for what it was in the pre-election stage. We realised it was a Holding legacy. Since it is coming to an end now, there is no need for the Rally to comment and to stir up unnecessary ill will or anything on how we see the interim board, other than to say that it was a great shame that a Labor Minister would appoint a board that did not have adequate union representation. That is a great shame and maybe one reason for the instability and the sniping that is going on at the interim board at the moment.
But we are not well placed in the Rally, and I do not know whether anyone in the Assembly is well placed, to know exactly deep down what is going on in the health system. It desperately needs a re-examination - - -
Mr Jensen: A guiding hand.
MR COLLAERY: Yes, it needs a guiding hand. The Rally supports the motion on the basis that the interim hospital board is carrying out its function as it was intended to, as it was appointed to by Minister Holding. In the absence of evidence from this Minister that the interim board is not performing its functions, which way can the Rally go on this motion but to support it? We are not going to damn an interim board in the absence of evidence that it is not doing its job. The fact is that, as things stand, unless you advise us to the contrary, Minister, we fully support the motion that the Liberal Party puts forward today, except where it says "a board of management, as recommended by the Kearney report, is the most appropriate form of hospital administration". I qualify that to say that there
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