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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 987 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

We all get a great deal of satisfaction from calling for another inquiry, another review, another independent process, to take place. But we make a mockery of our own confidence in the legislation we ourselves set up when we override existing processes to do that in the first place. We also consume resources we do not really have. There are not the resources in the system to waste on things of this kind. It was bad enough that resources were wasted on the ultrasounding of a dog. To throw additional resources after that rather belies our supposed concern about the problems the health system is experiencing. I think this motion is silly. Obviously, it is going to pass; but I think members are doing a great disservice to the health community and the people that community is supposed to serve by needlessly laying this inquiry onto a system that is already coping adequately with the problem that this issue has given rise to.

MR MOORE (11.49): I must say, before I start on the substantial part of my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we really had an interesting precedent set by Mr Humphries in his speech. First of all, he called a quorum on himself while he was speaking and thus cut his own time down. Then he turned around to the Assembly and asked for leave to speak longer, to make up the time he had lost, I presume. It reflects the generosity of this Assembly and its members that we did allow that to happen and now have this precedent sitting on the book.

It is a serious issue that we are dealing with. We know that the issue was the subject of news reports right across the world, and that reflects the fact that it is something that is particularly unusual, and also that it is incredibly unacceptable that this could occur. One of the things that concern me is that the issue appears to have gone beyond the treatment of a dog on 20 March. Certainly, I am conscious of allegations of at least two more occasions on which animals were treated in the hospital. The issue Mr Berry raises is whether we have an adequate process to assess that sort of issue and to deal with what Mr Osborne has described as the VMO culture. Perhaps Mr Osborne, although he has the concept right, has narrowed the culture a little too much to VMOs. There is a medical practitioner culture, certainly a senior specialist medical practitioner culture, that is clearly arrogant and would allow them not only to make a stupid mistake like this - I think at best we can say that yes, this was a stupid mistake, and probably from reasonably high motives - but also have other medical practitioners, senior specialists, saying, "What is wrong with it?". I think that is what has been the major concern, the most important concern.

How has the Government reacted? There are four investigations, we hear. The Clinical Privileges Committee is conducting one of those, and the Medical Board another, both of those being professional bodies, doctors investigating doctors. Already we have seen in letters to the editor and other places the doctors' attitudes to each other. They certainly are not going to break or assess or look at what Mr Osborne calls the VMO culture. Mr Osborne tells me that he has the copyright on that, so each time we say it we are going to have to flick over a coin. I wonder where he would patent it. The arrogance associated with that VMO culture that Mr Osborne talks about is something that needs to be investigated, and it will not be adequately investigated by the Medical Board.

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