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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2969 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (4.13): I cannot resist, Mr Speaker. Let me say just a few things, very briefly, in response to Mr Berry. I think it is a great pity - - -

Mr Berry: Helicopter Humphries.

MR HUMPHRIES: He is very good at calling names across the chamber. I am happy to be called a name and to call Mr Berry a name; that is fine. What I think is unfortunate is when the people whom Mrs Carnell's statement was meant to credit get caught in the cross-fire in this kind of debate. Mrs Carnell has referred to people who have done a sterling job in our Canberra Hospital Emergency Department. Mr Berry spent 15 minutes attacking Mrs Carnell's statement. This is what the debate is about - her statement on the Emergency Department. He spent 15 minutes attacking her statement, but claimed that he was not intending to hit anybody from the Emergency Department of the Canberra Hospital. It is the careless man's defence that he was not aiming for the pedestrian or the child whom he happened to hit by accident; he was aiming for something else or somebody else. Mr Speaker, that is the problem. Mr Berry cannot get stuck into this statement and the record of the Government on this question without hurting some of the people who, I think, today deserve nothing but credit from this chamber. So, I think it is a great pity that there is that kind of talk in the course of this debate.

Mr Speaker, I merely put on the record that Mr Berry himself has absolutely no basis to talk to this chamber about any of those issues that he has raised today. He is the man who cut 200 beds from the public hospital system. He is the man who increased waiting lists by 155 per cent in the space of just 31/2 years, from 1,789 to 4,569. He blew out four successive budgets, totalling $20m. Mr Speaker, how the Labor Party could let this man so much as appear within 100 metres of a hospital, much less be his party's spokesman on health, is a matter of great bemusement to me and to most other people in this city. I have to say that, on any test you apply of assisting people to recover their health and to be dealt with quickly by a public hospital system, in this case the Emergency Department of the Canberra Hospital, particularly, and Mrs Carnell, in general, deserve credit for having turned things around in our public hospital system.

Mr Speaker, let Mr Berry ask himself this simple question: Did any of the things he attacked Mrs Carnell for in his statement today not happen while he was Minister for Health? The answer is no. Every single thing he attacked her for - waiting times, having to bypass emergency, having budget blow-outs - also happened while Mr Berry was Minister for Health. What kind of rank hypocrisy does it take to rise in this place and hurl abuse at somebody for committing mistakes that you, yourself, have made? There is another thing that I would like to ask Mr Berry in some future debate on health - and there will be many to come. I would ask him to define, clearly and empirically, what tests he is applying to this Government's performance on health.

Mr Berry: Your own standards, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: Fine; but one single test. Let me go through the tests that Mr Berry has used over the last seven years in this chamber. Mr Berry started off as Minister for Health in this place and talked about budget management until his own budget of 1989-90 started to blow out. He stopped talking about budget management.

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