Page 2677 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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whether the minister, in answering those questions on Tuesday, misled the Assembly and, in addition, whether in answering her questions and dealing with these issues between now and then she has misled the community. It is quite clear from the obfuscation of Ms Gallagher and Mr Stanhope, the attempts to pivot to another issue, that they know that in answering those questions on Tuesday Ms Gallagher misled this Assembly.
The discussion is not about the management of the waiting list. That is a discussion for another day. The discussion here today is about this: what did Ms Gallagher say and is it correct? It is clear from the documents that were tabled by Ms Gallagher herself on Wednesday, and highlighted by Mr Hanson, that that is not the case. It is clear that, even when the minister said that it was unlikely that ACT Health had ever asked a doctor around the clinical status of a patient to downgrade the patient, that was happening; that there was a policy to the extent that there is a pro forma letter with a pro forma signature attached to it that goes to people on a regular basis.
Ms Gallagher tries to say, “They are not actually forced to do it.” But it is clear, despite what the minister said on Tuesday, that doctors are asked to downgrade patients. Ms Gallagher then tries to get away from that by saying, “But they are not forced to.” There are no words in this of actual force, except that we know that doctors are given the trade-off: “We will give you a definite date for surgery if you downgrade.” That is essentially putting the doctors in a half-Nelson and demanding that they sign.
The doctors are being bullied. Dr Peter Hughes has said on the radio this morning that doctors are being bullied and that what doctors are looking for is the best clinical outcome for their patients; they do not want to downgrade their patients. But the trade-off is: “If you downgrade them, if you take somebody out of category 1 and put them in category 2a, we will guarantee you a time, and that makes our category 1 surgery look good.”
This is a sleight of hand—a bullying, mustering sleight of hand—by this government, which is trying to manage its very, very bad hospital waiting lists. This is where we get to. The minister has got herself into substantial problems and what she should be doing here today is standing up and fessing up to the fact that on Tuesday when she said in answer to Mr Hanson’s question, “It is not in accordance with the policy,” she got it wrong. If the minister had the courage to stand up and say, “Actually, I got it wrong; really there is a policy, and let us have a discussion about the appropriateness of that policy,” in a sense she would be off the hook. But she does not have the courage to admit it when she has got something wrong. It is classic Labor tactics: you never admit when you get it wrong; you pivot, you try and change the subject and you try and distract people.
But the issue here today is that the minister said it was not policy. It is quite clear from the pro forma letters with the pro forma signature that it is policy. It is quite clear from the draft proposal that came to light more recently that it is a policy that has been in place for some time—so long, in fact, that now the hospital wants to codify it. And the reason the hospital wants to codify it is in the document itself, in the third paragraph on page 2:
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