Page 968 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
a member of our family or whatever, is that you need to be able to keep control of your emotions, reduce the stress in your life. But the health system under Katy Gallagher is contributing to that stress. That means that we have a failure of leadership from the person at the top, the person who takes the money and has the kudos of being the Minister for Health.
While community groups say, “We do not want to blame the minister,” when push comes to shove, she is the person responsible and that is why Mr Hanson’s motion puts her fairly and squarely in the game. It is reasonable, when you have the sort of litany that we have seen over the last little while—the failure in communications in oncology; a complete failure of leadership by the minister because of a culture of secrecy when you cannot tell people who a reviewer is and the reviewer is reviewing a toxic workplace where there is a culture of bullying and intimidation—and it is about time that this minister took responsibility.
Individual people in relation to an individual case may not want to blame the minister. But we, the people here collectively, who are paid to ensure that this minister does her job properly, should be taking it very seriously indeed. We are taking it very seriously indeed. These are serious matters and the fact that this Assembly today will not be able to bring itself to condemn the minister for her failings in these areas—for her failing to manage the portfolio efficiently, for failing to ensure that procedures and communications in ACT Health are effective and for failing to be transparent and open—shows that the members of the crossbench do not really care about the future of health in the ACT and bringing health administration front and centre in this place. They want to sort of shove it off and use their words. If we cannot have their words, we cannot have any words at all.
If the members of the crossbench were serious about this when they knew that Mr Hanson was going to move this, why did they not come and negotiate? “I have got a few problems with these words. Can we give a little here and take a little there?” You do not get that. “It is my way or the highway.” And what you actually have is more reinforcement that the Greens-Labor government alliance is alive and well.
What it boils down to is that we cannot criticise these people. We saw it yesterday when Mr Rattenbury could not criticise the minister who had demonstrably lied to this Assembly and we see it again today: the Greens cannot criticise the Minister for Health. They find it particularly hard to criticise the Minister for Health because I think that there is some feeling that the Minister for Health is more sympathetic to them than others and that that would be really difficult to do. They can from time to time bring themselves to criticise Minister Barr because, I suppose, Minister Barr is the person least like the Greens on that side and is probably feeling a little out of it at the moment because, as the Greens-Labor government becomes more and more entrenched, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable for the only eco rat in the village.
But back to the point at hand here. Mr Hanson has brought forward a motion today which is unfortunately part of an ongoing litany of failures that are a real problem for the people of the ACT. It is a real problem for the people of the ACT that their health system is in the state that it is. As Mr Smyth said, the minister is very good at talking about inputs and quoting statistics to gloss over it.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video