Page 176 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2008
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physiotherapy program. The ANU medical school is something that has been an understated success of our community. We are now seeing doctors who are choosing to come and work in the Canberra Hospital because we are getting a reputation of having such a strong medical school attached to our hospital campus.
The investments, not just the capital but the ongoing investments in terms of our staff teaching at the ANU medical school, will continue to reap benefits for the Canberra community because doctors and specialists are starting and are coming here from other countries and bringing with them their skills, their expertise. They are getting established here and then they are bringing their friends here, and we are seeing improvements in terms of attracting, in relation to the ANU medical school, doctors where we have had difficulties in the past.
This week we have started a conversation about the future of health for the next 20-odd years. It will require increases in capital and technology but it will also look at areas of workforce shortage and how we meet those needs. This discussion has already received widespread support from health stakeholder groups, including the Health Care Consumers Association and the AMA. I understand the ANF are supportive of the direction we are heading in. The salaried medical officers have also supported the conversation and the preparing of this discussion.
The only criticism to come so far has been from those opposite who have likened the plan to a spaceship and have really wedged themselves in a corner for the discussion now. They have opposed the plan for the future health needs of the ACT community, and I think they will live to regret that in the months to come.
Mr Stanhope: I ask that all further questions be placed on the notice paper.
Personal explanation
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo): I want to use standing order 46 again to make a personal explanation.
MR SPEAKER: Have you been misrepresented, Dr Foskey?
DR FOSKEY: I think that there needs to be some explanation. Mr Barr indicated in his answer that he felt that I had received a letter which elicited my question. I wish that it be on the record, in Hansard, that I received no such letter. So let us remove that misapprehension. Secondly, I was just doing what I have been doing ever since the state of the schools program was announced, which is asking questions and wanting to find out more about it and whether it is working well.
Questions without notice
Ruling by Speaker
MRS DUNNE: Mr Speaker, I would like to seek your guidance on a matter. You ruled Mr Pratt’s question out of order because he asked the minister whether or not he had misled the Assembly. It is my distinct recollection that, in the past, those questions have not been ruled out of order, when you ask a minister a direct question about whether or not he had misled the Assembly. It is certainly the case, in Erskine
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