Page 3686 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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MR MOORE (5.17): Madam Speaker, we heard, in earlier debate, some of the numbers presented by Mrs Carnell. Since that time, we have listened to the Minister's response. She pencilled out for us a calculation in which she intended to illustrate the misrepresentation of the numbers. To do that, she took the figure of 787 that was presented to the house in the paper tabled by the Minister the day before yesterday. She then took the figure of 732, which is the number in the annual report, and said, "That leaves a discrepancy of 55 beds". Following the debate today, she conceded that, of those 55 beds, you could perhaps eliminate 20 from Calvary, 20 from neonatal and 10 from dialysis; and that way there are still five beds outstanding.
What I did with Mrs Carnell's figures was go back to Mr Connolly's advisers and say, "How do you reconcile this?". They said, "No. The figures from Calvary apply; that is fine". They accept that, and Mrs Carnell has conceded that. They also say, "But the figures of 20 neonatal and 10 dialysis are already in both the 787 and the 732; they ought not be considered there. Instead, what you are talking about is what is not in the two figures - the 13 beds in detox; 11 in QEII; the 20 from Calvary, that we have discussed previously; and 11 new beds". That is how, in fact, they reconcile the figures.
What it illustrates to me, Madam Speaker, is that Mr Connolly does the very thing that I have just done. He goes to his advisers and says, "How do I reconcile these figures?". They come back with advice, and he takes that advice. Similarly, Mrs Carnell drew our attention earlier to four oncology beds. In fact, halfway through her speech she was passed a note, and she said, "Look, the four oncology that are supposedly opened have not been opened at all". Once again, I asked the staff that Mr Connolly has out there, including the secretary of his department, "What about these four oncology beds?". I have seen the note that Mrs Carnell has, including the name of the person - I will not mention the name - who provided this information. I asked, "Can you check?". I stood there while they immediately got on the phone and double-checked their numbers. They, in turn, assured me that those four oncology beds are opened, in the sense that it is the current way that these beds are counted, according to the May 1994 agreed way of counting beds across Australia. I am quite happy to pass that document to members. Basically, I am left with this question: "Has Mr Connolly misrepresented to the house information that he has?". The answer to that is clearly no. The information that he has, he has not misrepresented. That is the first part.
The second question - and this is something that we always have to be careful of - is: "Has he recklessly just accepted figures from his department that he ought to have known were wrong?". There is in that question an element of "Would that be acceptable?". If I believed that he had recklessly done that, then he would have something to answer for. Madam Speaker, having been through the process in the last little while - and I deliberately put myself through that process - I do not believe that he has done that recklessly at all. In fact, what he has done is attempted to reconcile the figures that Mrs Carnell raises. There certainly is an issue about how we count bed numbers. There certainly is an issue about whether it is being done accurately. I think that is an issue. That is an issue that Mrs Carnell is actually trying to deal with.
The converse side of that, Madam Speaker, is that, if I thought that Mrs Carnell had come in here and recklessly put up a censure motion to have a go at a Minister and to get some publicity, then I would have no hesitation in turning the censure motion around and
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