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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 994 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

X-rayed or ultrasounded his dog using a facility intended for human beings. It was not somebody else's dog. He did not, as far as I am aware, bill or charge the dog for the privilege of having been ultrasounded, and he did not bill or charge anybody else. We will be billing or charging him for that, I can assure you; but nobody else was billed or charged for it. So, what billing practices have to do with the abuse for personal and private reasons of this facility is beyond me.

Similarly, there is a certain mix of public and private patients in the hospital system. What has that to do with the abuse of the hospital's facilities for the purpose of ultrasounding a dog? If the doctors concerned have a certain proportion of their clients who are private and a certain proportion who are public, again, what has that to do with the ultrasounding of a dog? Is it not equally possible that a salaried medical officer who had access to the ultrasound machine might ultrasound his dog as well? Is it not possible that a doctor who was exclusively servicing private patients within the hospital system and who had access to the ultrasound machine could do the same thing? This just does not make any sense.

I do not know why I am talking about this, because all the people on the crossbenches are talking to each other and all the members opposite have made up their minds anyway. I might as well just be reciting Shakespeare.

MR SPEAKER: I uphold your comment. At great expense we provided lobbies for this chamber. I suggest that members might like to use them.

MR HUMPHRIES: I could call a quorum, I suppose. No, I will not do that. Mr Speaker, I think we are rushing in where angels fear to tread.

Mr De Domenico: Or dogs.

MR HUMPHRIES: Or dogs. We are being asked for a very broad inquiry. I do not think, with respect, that the Commissioner for Health Complaints is really equipped to be able to conduct an inquiry, not based on a specific complaint, into the relationship of the ACT with the Commonwealth Government and into the interrelationship between public and private patients as a philosophical question. That is not the commissioner's job. If he is going to conduct part of this inquiry and somebody else is going to conduct another part, we really are getting into a very confused state of affairs. Now we are talking about six inquiries into this issue. Mr Speaker, I think members should ask themselves whether this is being well thought through. We should reconsider this whole approach.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (12.14), by leave: From discussions with other members of the Assembly, I understand now that Mr Berry's concern with the original paragraphs (3) and (4) was to do much more generally with private practice rights for VMOs generally. That has been a concern for, I think, every member of this Assembly at some stage or another; but one of the things the Assembly should understand is that private practice rights exist for VMOs all over the country. They exist everywhere.

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