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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2027 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

that this Assembly could benefit from that style of extra experience here at the moment. Certainly, the Labor Party could benefit from having some women amongst its ranks.

What I set out to do here, and I had no choice about it, was to correct something that was patently false. It was identified by Dr Jeans' colleagues-very senior surgeons; very senior people at the hospital-as being different from the way Dr Jeans had perceived it. As I said, the issue will go to a coronial inquest anyway. No doubt we will see the results of that coronial inquiry in due time.

I think it is a sad issue because so much good work has gone into the hospital over the last 18 months in particular to change attitudes, to have the people in the hospital starting to feel good about themselves. I want to see a hospital, and I am sure all members want to see a hospital, where the nursing staff and the medical staff feel good about the hospital, where the medical staff and nursing staff are happy about their jobs and happy about their working environment.

Mr Deputy Speaker, many of the same issues could well apply to Calvary, but if you go to Calvary you will find an environment where people are happy to work there and want to work there. That is the process of change that the board and Mr Rayment, with his senior staff, are under way to achieve. Now, that is not to say that all nurses or doctors are sad, or that they do good work or bad work. Of course there are fantastic people in the hospital. The vast majority are fantastic workers who work tirelessly to deliver the best possible patient care.

How can we identify that? Very easily. We know that 25 per cent of our patients come from New South Wales. Why do they not go to Sydney to St Vincent's, Westmead, Liverpool or Prince Alfred? It is because they know that we have an excellent hospital system here. They know that if they come here they will get excellent service, that they will get excellent surgery, that they will get excellent support and that the nursing will be excellent. We are going to maintain that excellence because we maintain the highest possible patient care in a high-grade teaching hospital. Mr Deputy Speaker, maintaining that attitude, reminding people that that is what the hospital is about, is what is most important, rather than denigrating it in the way that it has been denigrated in the past.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Mr Berry: Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to move a motion-I can have it circulated in a moment, if you like-which, if passed, would require the Minister for Health and Community Care to withdraw his claim that the Special Death Review Committee had said that Dr Jeans' allegations were patently false.

Leave not granted.

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