Page 3335 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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The reviews were commissioned, the clinical review is in and the public interest disclosure review is still underway. As a minister, my job is to respond. I responded every time someone raised a concern. The obstetricians wrote to me. I asked for advice from my department. I replied to the obstetricians. I asked for them to provide me with more advice. They did not. The minute issues were raised in the workplace, I went and met with the unit. I put my questions directly to the unit. No concerns existed. That changed the morning after the TV news bulletin went to air on ABC.
I cannot explain why that was the catalyst that resulted in this workplace deciding that they wanted to see some change, but they did. We have sought to respond to that. My job is to respond to it. My job is to put in extra support. My job is to commission independent advice that enables us to move forward. My job is to go back to that unit and talk to them, and I have done that. I have asked them how they were feeling.
Mr Smyth: Your job is to make sure it doesn’t happen.
MS GALLAGHER: No, Mr Smyth. So nothing ever happened outside your control when you were a minister, did it? Nothing? You micromanaged everything. You knew what everyone was doing all the time. What a load of rubbish. A minister responds, and responds quickly, and that is exactly what I have done.
I stand here and I take my job as health minister very seriously. In fact, I take all of my responsibilities to the community very seriously, and that is why you just cannot cop these sorts of motions, I guess. They do affect you and you do look at yourself and wonder: “Am I doing the right job? Should I be here? Have I done something wrong?” I do take the time to reflect on my own performance—I go back and look at whether I missed anything and how I responded. But on these two matters, unfortunately for the opposition, you have failed the test again—you have failed to indicate how my involvement has been negligent.
I can stand here and say that I come to work every day to do the best for the ACT and to do the best for the ACT health system and for everybody who works within it. That is in stark contrast to the approach that you take when you come to work every day, because the approach you take is, “How can we do Katy Gallagher over today?” That is the approach you take. You could not give a care about the people who work in the maternity unit at Canberra Hospital. I doubt you have even spent a second worrying about them.
You have not even asked for a briefing around these matters. You have not even asked what we are doing. You have not even asked: “Have you got extra staff in there? What’s the workload like now? How are people feeling? How’s your recruitment going?” You have not even bothered, because you simply do not care. That is why the government will not be supporting this motion today.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.41): The Greens take motions of no confidence extremely seriously, and we hope that all parties in this Assembly treat this matter with the same level of seriousness. Yesterday afternoon I emailed Mr Seselja, asking him whether there was going to be a motion
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