Page 643 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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MRS DUNNE: I am reading from the proof Hansard here. I am reading from the proof Hansard of question time today. It says:
… particularly to the Canberra Hospital, is that the war that has existed in obstetrics for in excess of 10 years …
She says that there is a war in obstetrics, particularly in the Canberra Hospital, that has existed for 10 years.
When she was asked about this, she said that she became aware of it in 2005 on an own inquiry by the health complaints tribunal at the time. At the same time, although she has known about this war in obstetrics for 10 years and she has been the minister for four or five of those years, it seems that, once it became a public issue—some time on Monday, I think it must have been—the war is now over. She says the war is over. She said, “I have expressly asked that all the players that are involved set aside their differences.” I do not know whether this minister—under stress, under threat, who is struggling—suddenly sees herself as a new Woodrow Wilson or perhaps a Neville Chamberlain.
Mr Hanson: “Peace in our time.”
MRS DUNNE: Peace in our time. I do not know what it is. We have had the declaration of war and an outbreak of peace and love all in the course of one question.
This shows the loose language that this minister is capable of. That loose language has been thrown around since this issue reared its head again last week. We have had the minister trying to pooh-pooh people’s complaints, saying that it is doctor politics and mud-slinging. Just by the uttering of those words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The minister got into the gutter straightaway. She got out there with the mud straightaway.
When you listen to the things that she said today, you realise that she spent a lot of time saying, “That is one side of the story.” And that is correct; there is another side of the story. That is one side of the story. It is perfectly clear, from the words that the minister uses, that she has no truck with that side of the story and she is siding with the other people, the people who have had nothing to say about this for a long time.
It is quite clear what has happened with the VMOs, after years of this war, enduring what has been described as this toxic culture. The minister admits that there are problems. After years of attempting to address this issue, they finally go public, and this is when the minister does something about it. She has no sympathy for the VMOs, the senior medical practitioners. She has no sympathy at all for the registrars, the junior people who are at the bottom of this and who are having their training and their ongoing futures jeopardised by this war, this toxic culture. She has no sympathy for that.
She said, in an interjection just recently, I think when Mr Seselja was speaking, that she was about defending the public service, that that was her job: “I am here to defend
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