Page 3025 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 September 1994
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Mr De Domenico: Only when they deserve it.
MR BERRY: I hear Mr De Domenico saying that the unions deserve to be attacked. That gives you an idea of where the Liberals are coming from. They say that the unions deserve to be attacked. The representatives of the working people in this country have put a whole lot of effort into the restructuring of this country and this Territory, and Labor will work with them.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (3.38): Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity that Mr Berry has presented to the Assembly to demonstrate the Opposition's commitment to better management in Canberra. Mr Berry has, once again, donned his old comrade's tunic, complete with the tarnished Order of Lenin medals, I am sure.
Mr De Domenico: And the VITAB award on the other side.
MRS CARNELL: And the VITAB award. He almost launched into the "evils of profit" speech again, one that I know he is very happy giving.
The Liberal Party is about a commitment to better health, to a better public transport system and to a government that lives within its means. That seems to be just commonsense, and we believe that it is what the people of Canberra want. I want to focus my remarks upon the decline in Canberra's health system, over which the voters of the ACT will turf this Government out of office. They will certainly turf Mr Berry out of office because of his total responsibility for this, although Mr Connolly is doing very well in taking over at this stage. We also want to put on record today that, unlike the Liberal Party, the Labor Party has no health strategy. It is absolutely fascinating to hear, day after day in question time, the Labor Party attacking our initiatives because they have no initiatives of their own. Sometimes you would wonder who was the Government and who was the Opposition. I do not mind; I am very happy for them to attack our initiatives, because they do not have any.
Make no mistake; this MPI debate today is a debate about health management and providing services in the ACT, not about "silly ideology", as Mr Berry rightly put it. It is a debate about what has gone wrong in our hospitals since this Government was elected to office. I want to begin by reminding this Assembly - not that there are terribly many people here - of comments made by Mr Berry in a previous life.
Mr Connolly: There are only three Liberals here.
MRS CARNELL: There are only two of you. Mr Berry is the same MLA who, in February 1991, complained to the Community Times about waiting lists for elective surgery. Mr Berry described as scandalous the fact that there were 1,158 Canberrans waiting for surgery. Today, Mr Berry, after your term as Health Minister, there are more than 4,400 people waiting. He thought that 1,158 was scandalous. I wonder what he thinks of the situation today. There was a 170 per cent increase in the waiting lists while Mr Berry was Health Minister. That is scandalous.
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