Page 3325 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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Let us look at the history of this process. Before the election, there were secret negotiations when Katy Gallagher claimed that all of her plans were on the table. She continued negotiating in secret after the election, until the deal was leaked to the media. The minister was warned that spending the $77 million was a bad idea. It was not just the opposition. The opposition certainly warned her, but we were not alone. We can go through some of the warnings that we saw from experts in relation to this process. Sinclair Davidson stated:
Contrary to what they imply the ACT Treasury calculations do not support the purchase of the Calvary Hospital—rather they support the status quo or base case.
He went on to say, on 17 December 2009:
The Treasury analysis is not just in dispute, it is disreputable.
Here is a quote from Terry Dwyer:
… the Treasury analysis shows that, far from saving money, the proposed Government takeover of Calvary Hospital means the people of the ACT are to be made to pay extra tax to the tune of $160 million extra in cold hard cash.
Andrew Podger, President of the Institute of Public Affairs and a former secretary of the federal health department, said:
The ACT Government’s buy-out of Calvary Hospital seems to be based primarily on arguments about accounting practices and the financial risk to the ACT if it invests heavily in a hospital someone else owns.
It turns out that those accounting practices that it was based on were wrong. It was flawed; the advice was flawed. He went on to say:
It reminds me of the nonsense accounting arguments used a few years ago to support selling government assets even where there was clear evidence of better management by government.
He went on to say:
If not, then someone please get the accountants to fix a problem that is theirs, not the taxpayers’ or the hospital users’.
You have to ask the question, Mr Speaker: would this not have given some pause to the health minister? This advice comes from several sources—Sinclair Davidson, Andrew Podger, Terence Dwyer, and we have Tony Harris. Tony Harris, the former New South Wales Auditor-General, said that the argument was a contrivance. Are we to believe that Tony Harris was never to be believed, that he is not a credible figure who this Treasurer and this health minister should not have listened to? She was keen to quote Tony Harris when his conclusions suited her arguments, but when he gave contrary advice, she ignored it, and she was prepared to go ahead and spend
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