Page 3401 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
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Paediatric Services
MR KAINE: Madam Speaker, through you, I have a question of the Minister for Health. Minister, on 14 September, in answer to a dorothy dixer from Ms Ellis, you said:
... in a city of this size it would be very bad medicine to seek to duplicate paediatric services. Bear in mind, Ms Ellis, that in Sydney - a city which, on the last advice I received, is a little larger than Canberra, by a factor of about 20 - there are two units.
I draw your attention, Minister, to the fact that there are two paediatric hospitals in Sydney and that a total of 21 hospitals in the Sydney metropolitan area have, in fact, paediatric beds. The total number of paediatric beds there is 972. I will table the statistics which demonstrate this to be so, Madam Speaker. In light of that, Minister, I ask you: Did you deliberately attempt to mislead the Assembly and the people of Canberra by misrepresenting the real number of paediatric services in New South Wales; were you being one of those grubby politicians that you were talking about before; or is it the same as with all the other questions you have been asked - you just do not know?
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Kaine, I have already drawn attention to standing order 117(d). Could members of the Opposition reword their questions, if that is the form of question that they want to ask. It is not beyond the realm of possibility to reword questions in terms of asking for confirmation or further comment. It is out of order.
MR CONNOLLY: No, Madam Speaker, I do not believe that I misled the Assembly. What I said was that there were two paediatric units in Sydney. I suppose that what I was meaning by "units" was full-on specialist paediatric services. I was responding to the absurd suggestion from Mrs Carnell, who runs around saying - - -
Mr Humphries: You said "units".
MR CONNOLLY: Yes. I did not say "wards" or "beds", which is what you were trying to say when you were running around drumming up suggestions in the media that I had misled the Assembly. You tried to hawk this one to the Canberra Times about four weeks ago, and nobody would touch the story because it is so damn silly.
The point I was making - and I think at that stage I tabled all the documents, but I am happy to do so again - was that the advice that I get from the Royal Australian College of Paediatrics and from specialist paediatricians in Canberra - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Connolly. Mr Kaine, you do not have leave to table that. You will have to wait.
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