Prebble claims he will have his way

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 6

Prebble claims he will have his way

PA Wellington The sacked Cabinet Minister, Mr Richard Prebble, says he and the former Finance Minister. Mr Roger Douglas, will have their way with plans to deregulate health, social welfare and education. In a speech on deregulation prepared for delivery yesterday in Vancouver, Canada, Mr Prebble said he and Mr Douglas, “Parliament's leading progressives,” were advocating deregulation from the back benches. “Truth will prevail — and day by day, as the failure of the regulated economy continues, we gain more converts. We will inevitably prevail,” he said. His fighting talk follows signs last week of a thaw between Mr Douglas and the Prime Minister, Mr Lange. Under mounting caucus pressure, Mr Lange said he held two hour-long meetings with Mr Douglas who had "a commitment, which I accept, that he wants to see the Government returned.” The Prime Minister has given notice that he intends to reshuffle his Cabinet before the election in October next year, which would give him an opportunity to bring Mr Douglas back in. Mr Prebble said the Government’s continued regulation of certain protected areas of the economy was failing spectacularly. Being a Labour Government, it was reluctant to deregulate health, social welfare and education. But- it was confusing means and ends. In health, for example, the bureaucracy could not cope with the fast pace of change in medicine, he said..

The Government felt obliged to stick with a limited-choice, highly-re-gulated State hospital system, overlooking the waiting list of 50,000 people — many of whom were in agony and some who would die before being treated.

A Government study showed the public hospital system led to high-cost, inefficient health care, with the patient getting a poor deal.

The obvious answer was to take the lessons learned from the rest of the economy, recognise that the hospital system was a medical industry and deregulate to introduce competition and choice.