Page 2671 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (10.47): The motion truly is a nonsense. I think the Liberal speakers to the motion to date have confirmed that there has been no cogent or real position, or indeed a serious effort to sustain a case that the minister has misled. She quite clearly has not. If one goes to the Hansard, the record of everything that the minister has said in this place in relation to this motion and this issue, it is quite clear, it is plain—it is there for everybody to see in the Hansard, in association with the documents that the Liberal Party rely on—that there has been no mislead. Just going to the Hansard and the questions that are now being parroted out, out of context, Mr Hanson asked the question on 22 June: “Has the department ever engaged in the practice of downgrading patients in order to make the figures look better?” That was the question.
Mr Hanson: That is not the question that we are relating to, Mr Stanhope.
MR STANHOPE: That is the question. This is how it started. This was the first, the opening question: “Is the department deliberately doctoring the figures?” The minister responded by saying, “There is absolutely no evidence of downgrading in line with the allegations.” That was the allegation and now, all of a sudden, the context is no longer provided. This is the allegation Mr Hanson started with, that the government was deliberately doctoring the figures. The minister replied, “Well, they’re not deliberately doctoring the figures.”
The answer is actually used to substantiate this censure motion, but the question, the basis of the question, and the allegations that were put—they are outrageous allegations—go to the integrity, the honesty and the honour of all practising surgeons in the ACT, as does this motion. When you look at this motion, it is, at its heart, an attack on ACT surgeons. It is an attack on the doctors. It is an attack on the medical profession, and they know it. It is interesting that we skirt over who it is that is at the base of the allegation. The allegation is that doctors are deliberately doing this, that doctors are in some way complicit in misleading their patients, the system, the hospital. The Liberal Party seem to ignore that nicety in the attack they make.
If you go to all of the answers that the minister gives to the questions and the specific questions asked, she has been absolutely truthful and honest. Where she is not 100 per cent clear, she makes it explicit when she says, “I cannot recall that having been raised with me.” She uses this language:
I have never had a case brought to my attention or any evidence to say that the process that is in place, which has doctors making those decisions, has not been followed.
That is absolutely true. It is explicit, careful, precise. She is, as always, determined to be absolutely honest in her answers and in the delivery and meeting of her obligations and responsibilities as a member of the executive and as a minister. There are further questions: “Have ACT Health at any stage approached doctors to request that patients
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