Page 3341 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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I resigned in 2008. I felt that I could no longer work at the hospital to the best of my ability because I was very concerned about what was going on around me. I was starting to lose sleep …
Many others made complaints. In fact, nine people resigned. Numerous complaints were made. These complaints were prominent throughout the media in February and were the subject of a motion, led by me, calling on the government to establish a board of inquiry. I am glad that at least the Greens acknowledge that the only reason we had these reports, the only reason we had these investigations, is that motion. When Katy Gallagher said in her speech that she instigated these of her own volition, that was another lie; that was another mislead. That was not true. And even Meredith Hunter, the great apologist for Katy Gallagher, says that that is true.
At the time, the minister denied that there were any legitimate concerns. She described the serious complaints made by the obstetricians as internal doctor politics and mud-slinging. She said that the claims were without substance. The minister actually attacked the doctors and their credibility. This is what she said in the Canberra Times:
… stop throwing stones and damaging the unit ….
… all I’ve seen is a lot of mud being slung around and no substantiation.
She then said in this place in February:
I believe that something good can come out of the way that this mud-slinging has occurred, and I do believe it is mud-slinging. It is an approach that I have not seen—the nature of the attacks on the credibility of hardworking individuals within the Canberra Hospital—before in my time in this place. I think it is immensely regrettable and has done extraordinary damage to a number of individuals. I regret that.
The minister was picking sides before the review had even started. She was publicly protecting the people who were the bullies and she was publicly protecting the bureaucrats rather than looking out for the interests of the medical staff, the doctors and the midwives. Andrew Foote, who is the chairman of the royal college of obstetricians and gynaecologists, said:
We were concerned that the Minister was trivialising this issue and writing it off as doctor politics, but it’s really about patient safety and the safety for women and babies.
Then Katy Gallagher and Jon Stanhope, who were laughing at the doctors’ complaints just five minutes ago, went one step further and wanted a witch-hunt. They wanted to go after the obstetricians and they threatened. What they wanted was an audit of all of the complaints that had been made to the medical boards over the last 10 years that involved obstetricians. That was rightly described by the doctors as a witch-hunt, as a thinly veiled threat. And that is what it was. It was only as a result of pressure from the media, the opposition and the doctors themselves that the minister was dragged
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