Page 2150 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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Mr Stefaniak and Mrs Burke claim in their dissenting report that we have a health system that is tearing itself apart, lacks innovative leadership and is devoid of tangible service standards. In the face of the excellent outcomes produced by public health in the ACT at Canberra hospital and at Calvary hospital how is it seriously to be accepted or believed that Mr Stefaniak and Mrs Burke believe that Calvary hospital and Canberra hospital are tearing themselves apart, that Calvary hospital lacks innovative leadership, and that Calvary hospital and Canberra hospital are totally devoid of tangible service standards?
Let me repeat what Mr Stefaniak and Mrs Burke said of Canberra hospital and of Calvary hospital and their staff—the doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and everybody that services Canberra hospital and Calvary hospital. This is what Mr Stefaniak, the leader of the opposition, and Mrs Burke, the deputy leader of the opposition and the shadow minister for health, think of all the people that work at Canberra hospital and at Calvary hospital. This is how they described those two hospitals and all those people who work in those two hospitals.
This is the description that Mr Stefaniak and Mrs Burke provide of all our doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and all those people who provide service to Canberra hospital and to Calvary hospital: “A health system that is tearing itself apart and that lacks innovative leadership.”
How could anybody say of Canberra hospital and Calvary hospital that they are devoid—in other words, totally lacking—of tangible service standards? That is just breathtaking. It is breathtaking that Bill Stefaniak and Jacqui Burke believe that our doctors and nurses are totally lacking in tangible service standards; devoid of tangible service standards, in other words, completely lacking—
Mr Mulcahy: I think you have made your point.
MR STANHOPE: No, I will be making this point again and again. I think you will hear it for the next year. The Liberal Party in the ACT thinks that our doctors and nurses are totally lacking in tangible service standards or a commitment to services. Through those sorts of statements they denigrate the exceptional efforts and the tireless work of our health professionals in building an efficient and effective health system and a public hospital system that is the envy of Australia.
Sadly, it is typical of those opposite to routinely and shamefully attack this city’s fine public servants in the misguided belief that they are attacking the minister. The hurt and the offence taken are deep and real, and the accusations are unfair and unwarranted. It is on this basis that the government does not consider the individual recommendations or associated comments included in the report are worthy of any response and we refuse to dignify them with a response.
Returning to the main report of the estimates committee, the recommendations do not raise any serious issues that would prevent the passing of the 2007-08 appropriation bill. Rather, the report seeks more information and clarification on a range of issues, and it contains many useful recommendations that the government has agreed to pursue, where feasible, or that it is currently pursuing.
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