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Press, Volume CV, Issue 31028, 6 April 1966, Page 3

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(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 5. The Attorney-General (Mr Hanan), who is member of Parliament for Invercargill, said today that a prominent Wellington physician, Sir Charles Burns, had been invited by the Southland Hospital Board to accept a consulting position with the board but the invitation had been declined.

With the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Taiboys), who is the member of Parliament for Wallace, he had approached Sir Charles Burns yesterday with the hope that he would accept the board's invitation, said Mr Hanan. Mr Hanan said the only step the Government could take at present in the dispute between the board and the hospital visiting medical staff committee was to reconvene a committee of inquiry. Mr Hanan said the Minister of Health (Mr McKay) had power to appoint a commission to act in place of the board, but this could only be done on the recommendation of the Hospitals’ Advisory Council —and if the board had breached any of the provisions of section 84 of the Hospitals Act, 1957, and no evidence had been submitted to Mr McKay that this was so. Mr Hanan said. Southland members of Parliament have asked Mr McKay to given urgent consideration to reconvening the committee unless the board and committee can' sink their differences until May 30—when applications close for a superintend-ent-in-chief. The Kew Hospital’s visiting medical staff committee today described the board’s

proposal to invite “the Wellington medical man” to Invercargill as a consultant, with no powers, as “fatuous." “The proposal has only one point—to make the public of Southland believe their board is genuinely interested in having ‘the Wellington medical man,’ while, in fact, it prevented the man coming.” The committee said it believed the terms of the board’s offer to “the Wellington medical man" .were such that he could not agree to come.