Page 644 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
the public service; that is my job.” That is a new doctrine, another Gallagher doctrine, a new doctrine for the Minister for Health. I would have thought that the Minister for Health’s job was to ensure quality service—high-quality health care for all people in the ACT, high-quality health care for people irrespective of what sector they are—and, on top of that, a high-quality working environment.
Whether they are salaried doctors, registrars, visiting medical officers, nurses, wardsmen or ancillary staff, she has to provide a high-quality working environment. Without that high-quality working environment, the amount of money you spend on a new women’s and children’s hospital will be for nought. Bricks and mortar are important, but if you do not have a system that ensures that doctors are working in a happy environment, there will be problems. If people are, by their own admission, taking antidepressants and failing to sleep, and then they come in and have to make critical medical judgements, this is where you will get problems.
If people, on top of that, are not getting training or if their training is being jeopardised by the departure of senior doctors, what hope do we have for our future generations of trained doctors? We are trying to encourage doctors to come, train and stay in the ACT, but when issues are raised, the response of this minister is to get in the gutter, accuse people of mud-slinging and try and pooh-pooh it by saying, “It’s just doctor politics.” Then, when put under pressure, she said: “It’s a war that I’ve known about for at least five years, but it has been going on for 10 years. It has been going on for 10 years, and while I have been the Minister for Health, knowing about the existence of this war, I have done nothing about it. I have done nothing about it until the issue becomes a public issue.”
What we have had is, by the minister’s own admission, an eleventh-hour agreement. On Sunday afternoon she signed off on some terms, on a way forward.
Mr Hanson: She hasn’t even given them terms of reference.
MRS DUNNE: There are no terms of reference. She signed off on a way forward. She said, “Look, I had some discussions over the weekend with the interim head of ACT Health, and on Sunday afternoon I signed off on a way forward.” It is typical of this government that she would sign off on a way forward and then go to a meeting the next day with the principal protagonists and tell them what she is going to do.
Ms Gallagher: Which they were happy about.
Mr Hanson: Really?
MRS DUNNE: We only have the minister’s report of the meeting to tell us whether they are happy about that or not. We have had the minister’s report of the meeting that they are happy about the thing. It is like all the issues that the government deals with: it is their spin on it.
You have four or five doctors, who have other things to do, who have to come and negotiate for the future of their profession and the future of high-quality training in their speciality when they perhaps should be out delivering babies or performing
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video