Page 3326 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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$77 million of taxpayers’ money, despite all of the advice to the contrary—all of the credible advice.
We saw the attitude of Katy Gallagher in relation to it:
The point which I have been making is that nobody has been able to dispute the fact that, under the three models, there is a $145 million improved outcome on our budget, according to the Treasury analysis …
Well, they did dispute it, they have disputed it and they have been proven right. This minister has again been proven wrong. She was prepared, on poor advice, ignoring a wide array of expert advice, to take the ACT down a path where we would spend $77 million of taxpayers’ money on a public hospital that was already providing public hospital services—$77 million on the back of flawed accounting arguments that would have had absolutely no benefit to the community whatsoever. The Treasurer showed her arrogance in relation to this in ignoring this advice, and she showed a complete lack of judgement.
Just last week, we heard that actually they do not need to buy it. They no longer need to buy it. It turns out that the Treasurer was wrong. It turns out that the health minister was wrong. It turns out that the experts whose advice she was ignoring were right. She was prepared to throw away this $77 million. And we can only imagine the looks on the faces of Katy Gallagher and Jon Stanhope when they were advised that they were wrong, when they were advised that they almost took us down a path of wasting $77 million. They wanted to take us down a path of wasting $77 million. Were they not blocked in other ways, they would have taken us down a path of wasting $77 million. What if they had gone down that path and then got the advice—the advice that they never bothered to seek earlier, until they got blocked and had to look for other options?
This has been a complete failure of process, a complete failure of judgement. And the consequences are broader than just the bullet that we dodged—the $77 million bullet that we dodged. What we have had is a government that has been distracted by this over the past couple of years. We have had the uncertainty that has been created. We have had the government actually saying they cannot properly invest in Calvary. So we have seen a delay in investment in Calvary because they simply got it wrong, because they did not bother to do the due diligence, because they did not bother to seek genuine external counsel. They got it wrong, and now we see the consequences.
All the while, while we have seen this distraction of the Calvary hospital purchase, of the proposal to throw away $77 million of taxpayers’ money, we have seen the health system fraying in other ways. We have seen waiting lists getting longer. We have seen all sorts of examples that showed something was not right. We had bills being sent to grieving parents. We had the issues around TB—a whole range of issues that came up and about which we were told, “They’re just individual issues; there’s nothing there.”
Of course, we saw the concerns crystallised when the obstetricians started speaking out. The obstetricians started speaking out, and what did the health minister do? What did the health minister do when the obstetricians started speaking out? She attacked
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