Page 1343 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
to in debate. We have seen Katy Gallagher say, with a smile, “Trust me,” being very reassuring. She is very good at that. She is very good at presenting a face of reassurance to the community that everything is okay and that there is nothing to worry about. Our job is to find out the truth that lies behind that.
It is quite clear that she would have got this proposal through had she not had to bring it forward as an appropriation bill. She would have done the first deal, which has failed. She sought advice from Treasury and that was that she had to bring in an appropriation bill. Thankfully, the only reason we are still debating this and trying to find out what the truth is is that she was forced to do that, otherwise she would have simply pushed it through.
The sad fact is that Katy Gallagher must take responsibility for where we find ourselves today, 18 months on, and the absolute disruption this has caused ACT Health, the Assembly and the community. She needs to take responsibility for where this process has led us to, rather than continually trying to blame others, particularly the Catholic Church, and spreading fear and distrust within the community. She failed to get a mandate for this proposal from the electorate and she is now paying the consequences of that. Today we are attempting to make sure that we do not go through a similar process that just takes us further along and then, 18 months later, we find ourselves in a similar situation.
The point is that if you do your plans in secret, behind closed doors, whilst you are telling people that there is nothing occurring then you will pay the consequences of that. That is what has happened here. Any pretence at consultation that the government conducted is simply pretence. Everybody that participated in the 11th hour of consultation on the Calvary proposal late last year saw it as an exercise in advocacy rather than consultation. Indeed, Ms Gallagher said that herself. She admitted in a public forum that no amount of opposition to the proposal would prevent the government from pursuing its agenda.
The Canberra Liberals tried to instigate a proper process of consultation in the Assembly in June 2009. We tried to establish a process of consultation and that was rejected by the Greens and Labor. In October last year, we tried to refer the matter to the Auditor-General. Again, that was rejected by the Greens and Labor. Would it not have been a good thing to have had a proper process of consultation and to have had the Auditor-General look at this in detail?
The government, and Ms Gallagher in particular, have failed to demonstrate any health benefits of the proposal. There was a lot of supposition—“Yes, having a whole single system will make it more efficient”—but she actually admitted in this chamber that it would not make the health system any better. When I asked her a question, one of her lines was:
It is going to have no impact on the future of Canberra, you fool.
Those were the words that she used. I tried to seek clarification:
It is going to have no impact?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video