Page 2660 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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MR SPEAKER: Order, members. Stop the clocks. Members, there is obviously a level of political angst on this one, but I do not expect Mr Hanson to be shouted down.
Mr Stanhope: There is a bit of embarrassment.
MR SPEAKER: You will have your chance in a moment, Mr Stanhope, and your colleagues. Mr Hanson, you have the floor.
MR HANSON: Mr Speaker, what is clear is that the community and this Assembly have been misled. It is there in black and white; it is categorical. As a result, this minister deserves to be censured, and the decision for the Greens is whether they are going to support Katy Gallagher over what happens to be a clear mislead. They have been misled, just as we have been misled. With respect to the decision for them, I know there is a relationship between Katy Gallagher and Meredith Hunter, a friendship, but she has to put aside that friendship, she has to put aside that personal relationship, and the Greens have to step up and demand accountability and scrutiny of this government, because there is a standard of ministerial accountability. There are documents signed by the Chief Minister relating to ministerial standards and, quite clearly, this minister has breached them. She deserves to be censured for her absolute mismanagement of the health system, for misleading the community and for misleading the Assembly.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.16): The government will not be supporting this motion and I think the shadow opposition health spokesman has failed to make the case for the Liberals. It is surprising, given the amount of venom he has for me, but also given the time he has had to prepare a case, which he has failed to outline to the Assembly today.
The Liberals have accused me of misleading the community and misleading the Assembly. It seems to be the only plank of their evidence, the Hansard of my comments to this place, because this is about my misleading. It is clear from the questions that I answered last week that my answers are correct.
The Liberals did not ask me the question: “Does ACT Health ask doctors to appropriately categorise their patient?”—in which case my answer would have been yes. Their question was: “Does ACT Health approach doctors and ask them to downgrade their patients?” They do not do that; the policy does not do that; the letter does not do that. Indeed, Dr Ashman’s draft policy which he took to a chief executives forum where it was discussed, as I understand it, last week, does not do that.
What those policy documents do and what my comments relate to is this: “Are doctors asked to appropriately categorise their patients?” This is a common, standard way of managing your elective surgery waiting list to ensure that category 1 patients, appropriately categorised category 1 patients—that is, the most urgent outside of emergency surgery—get access to the theatres and to their surgeons ahead of people with less urgent conditions.
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