Page 3066 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 11 September 1990
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the ordinary person in the street and which ensures that there are a larger number of private hospital beds out of reach of the ordinary person in the street. They do not want such a public hospital system, as was proved by the judges at the debate which I recently won. They do not want a public hospital system which will cost more.
The Minister was not even competent enough to stack the meeting. The best he could do was to bring Bill Stefaniak along. I must admit I thought for a moment that Bill Stefaniak was going to vote for me. The fact of the matter is that we are in for troubled times in the hospital system. The public of the ACT will have difficulty with the system. It will be a political issue, up until this Government is thrown out of office.
School Closures : Hospitals
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.08): I have to respond briefly. I do not want to get into the budget debate, but unfortunately Mr Berry and Mr Wood have both raised issues in respect of that. The fact of life is that the figures are now on the table. The arguments about the budget savings have been raging for some time, pushed along by Mr Wood and his colleagues. The figures are on the table; they are there to see. I am sure Mr Wood will be spending the wee small hours of the morning perusing those documents and obtaining information about them. I am sure that when he sees what is in those documents he will have a very different view of the Government's savings objectives from the one he has had in the past.
In respect of Mr Berry's comments on the hospital debate, Mr Berry is, as usual, running a very clever little campaign of juxtaposing apples with pears. He made reference to the number of beds approved under - - -
Mr Berry: "Available" too; I mentioned "available".
MR HUMPHRIES: "Approved"; that is what the Hansard will say - the number of beds approved under the Follett Government and the number of beds actually operating under the Kaine Government. Of course, it is a very false comparison to make, because there are never, in any hospital system, as many beds operational as have actually been approved.
Mr Berry is obviously feeling the heat, because he cannot stay any longer. He has to get out to put out a press release, no doubt spinning some false little tale about what has been happening in here today. But the fact of life is that he knows full well - - -
Mr Stefaniak: You have brought him back now.
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