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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2329 ..

Mr Berry: Rubbish!

MRS CARNELL: No, it is not rubbish. This is part of bringing management structure under control, bringing budgets back on track and really having a health system that operates efficiently. If this Assembly determines to put this Bill off, it will not be because nobody has had time to look at the Bill. They have. It will not be because they have not been briefed. They have. The people who work in our health system have been briefed; the unions have been briefed. There have been any number of briefings on this right across our system, Mr Speaker.

I have made it quite clear publicly on many occasions for many months that we were planning to bring in a new management board in Health. This is not new information, Mr Speaker. I believe that the Assembly should handle this Bill today. I think it is essential for Health, to allow us in Health to get the show on the road. We are moving to purchaser-provider. There are a large number of changes in our senior management in the department, the hospital and the community care area. To hold this up now really would delay the changes that desperately need to be made.

MR MOORE: I seek leave to make a statement on this matter as well.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: The best part about speaking by leave is that you do not have a time limit. Thank you, members, for leave. The thing that I think is most important here was summed up by Mrs Carnell's last statement, "Let us just get this under way". You get the impression that once she has her board then it will be a roller-coaster ride all the way down; that there may be a few ups and downs but we will go with speed and we will have all the health problems solved. That is one side of the debate.

I put the other side of the debate when I stood in here yesterday urging members very strongly that we ought not to proceed with a Bill that we had had in front of us for only a week. The difference between the Bill we have in front of us now and the Bill from yesterday is that at least I have had a draft version of this particular piece of legislation - the draft is almost identical to the final, I must say - for quite a long time, whereas yesterday, when Labor decided that we could manage to make a decision on a matter that I thought dealt with some major principles, we as an Assembly suggested that it was better for that legislation to go through. Mr Speaker, I feel myself getting dangerously close to reflecting on a vote of the Assembly, although I will be careful not to do that. When I look at the issue of whether this debate should be adjourned and whether we should have time to think about the Bill, I am taken back to quite a number of times in the previous Assembly when Ms Follett argued strenuously that she needed something urgently in order to make her Government work and Mrs Carnell, with my support, said, "No. We are going to take more time and that is too bad".

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