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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 242 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

But if, for argument's sake, an officer within the system is mishandling his or her job, of course it is the responsibility of the Minister for Health to ensure that the officer concerned is removed from a particular area if that job is not being performed properly. That is not just his right; that is his responsibility.

Ms Tucker is in the chamber, I see. I say to her, "Is it wise to send the signal that the Assembly does not approve of Ministers interfering in issues of personnel management in the hospital?". I assume that is what this motion is designed to identify. It is to say to Mr Moore, "You should not have been involved in dealing with Mr Johnston and somehow involving yourself personally in that process". I assume that is what part of the motion is all about. Is that wise? Can we sustain that? I would argue that we cannot and it is wrong to do that, and that we should not pass a motion in those terms.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to address an issue raised by Mr Kaine. He said that the hospital budget had increased by 15 per cent per annum for each of the last three years. In fact, it has not. It has increased by only 12.8 per cent over the whole of the three years.

Mr Moore: If you just accept the raw figures.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. That is based on the raw figures, at least. Obviously, adjustments have to be made within that. If you take into account both inflation and population increases, and increases in acuity, that really represents, I think, a quite stable health budget over that period.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the Assembly has great power in these matters. The Assembly stands in a position of being able to exercise considerable influence in the way in which government carries out its job. It has exercised that power in the last few weeks in respect of another area of government activity, namely, the management of superannuation liabilities and the operation of a major public asset and its continued ownership in public hands. So we should not just assume that motions of this kind are an exercise in sending hollow signals or making empty gestures, and the Government just battens down and carries on with its job. This Government, at least, takes very seriously what the Assembly says. If the Assembly sends the signal through this that it is mismanagement to intervene in the hospital process, that it is mismanagement to replace the chief executive officer of the Canberra Hospital - not that that is what happened, as Mr Moore has explained - and that the Government stands to be chastised for doing that, then what should the Government be doing instead?

I hesitate to mention that the Government has not heard many solutions in this debate. We have heard lots about what we should have been doing in the past, and lots to condemn us for what is going on at the moment, but almost nothing in the nature of what we should be doing. Mr Deputy Speaker, I say again, as I have said in previous debates, that we increasingly come to the stage where we cannot get away with that approach any longer. If governments are to be held accountable here and their programs are to be held up or stopped altogether in certain ways, then it is incumbent on the Assembly to tell us what they would do in our place if that were their choice.

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