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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 788 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

I am confident that nobody in this Assembly wants a continuing situation of budget blow-outs, waiting list blow-outs, no extra patients, blow-outs in VMO payments, blow-outs in wages - all the things we have heard time and time again since self-government. The only way to change that is to change fundamentally the way we run Health. We will be doing that over the next couple of months. The plans are in place. We now have enterprise agreements, and we now have agreements with the unions. I believe that it is possible, but I am fascinated that for doing those things this Assembly believes that I should be censured.

MR BERRY (12.38): Mr Speaker, I want to speak briefly to the amendment that Mr Moore has placed before the chamber. I suppose that it could be said that it is an efficiency measure which removes the requirement to move another censure motion later on. Mrs Carnell complains and asks why she should be picked out. Nobody in the history of self-government has bragged so much about her ability to manage Health or has made all of the promises that Mrs Carnell has made. We all remember: "Cut $30m from Health; 50 new beds; cut waiting lists". She made all of the promises to the people of the ACT, so nobody should be under the microscope more than Mrs Carnell. All of us recognise that Health is a tough deal, but nobody has bragged so much about her ability as Mrs Carnell.

Mr Speaker, this is not an amendment which we have proposed, but we are prepared to support it. We regard Mrs Carnell's bragging approach before the election to what she was going to do and the actual outcomes as a fair reason for placing her management of the health system under scrutiny. Nobody in the ACT will forget the way that Mrs Carnell harassed the Labor Party when we were in government with the pretence that she was going to do things much better and that all would be okay if she led a government. She has misled us all. For those reasons we will be supporting the amendment.

Question put:

That the amendment (Mr Moore's) be agreed to.

The Assembly voted -

AYES, 9	 	NOES, 6

Mr Berry	Mrs Carnell
Ms Follett	Mr Cornwell
Ms Horodny	Mr De Domenico
Mr Moore	Mr Hird
Mr Osborne	Mr Kaine
Ms Reilly	Mr Stefaniak
Ms Tucker
Mr Whitecross
Mr Wood

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