Page 4668 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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Health Budget - Monthly Reports
MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, I have a further response to questions raised by Messrs Humphries and Collaery yesterday. I wish to inform the Assembly that I have not received the Board of Health financial figures for the month ending 31 October 1991. An officer of my department has discussed the Assembly decision of yesterday with the chairman of the Board of Health. I have discussed it with him on the telephone. I am in the process of arranging a meeting with the chairman, which will occur early next week, to discuss the issue further. I remind members of concerns expressed by the board chairman about political interference by Assembly members in normally confidential management matters which, by way of process, are provided for under the Health Services Act. I am mindful of the provision under the Health Services Act which will allow me to issue directives to the board.
PERSONAL EXPLANATION
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I seek leave under standing order 46 to make a personal explanation.
MR SPEAKER: Do you claim to have been misrepresented?
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, I do, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Please proceed.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, today on the Julie Derrett program the Minister for Health, Mr Berry, made reference to financial management in the hospital system and he said: "Certainly Health has been exemplary in its bad financial management". It is a curious phrase, but that is what he said. He continued: "That was, of course, most evident under the period of the former Government. What was most important about the former Government was that they did nothing to fix it". Mr Berry, I think, repeated that assertion today in the course of an answer in question time.
It is, of course, a reflection on me. I remind the house, Mr Speaker, and Mr Berry, that Mr Berry himself, before the Estimates Committee, has conceded that the statement is wrong. Mr Berry has conceded that the former Government did take action in response to both former reports, that is, by Mr Enfield and by the Treasury, in 1991 and 1989 respectively. Mr Speaker, I give Mr Berry notice that if he continues to push what he knows to be untrue, and what he has told the Assembly's Estimates Committee is untrue, I will take the matter further.
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