Page 3347 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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The minister has failed the people of this territory by delivering some of the worst health performance indicators in this country. She has failed the doctors and the nurses by not supporting them, by not protecting them and by not making sure that when there is bullying, when there is harassment, she will treat it fairly and impartially rather than protecting the bullies and protecting her bureaucrats. She has failed every single taxpayer in this territory with her ridiculous plans to waste $77 million of their money. (Time expired.)
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (11.18): As the Minister for Health said at the outset of her presentation, this really is just raw politics. There is no substance. We see through the two presentations made by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Minister for Health absolutely no attempt or effort or desire to justify or to go to those essential ingredients in a no-confidence motion.
A no-confidence motion is the most serious motion that can be brought in a parliament in Australia. A no-confidence motion is a motion which at its heart proposes or postulates that the minister against whom it is directed is not fit to carry out the duties of her office. The motion suggests that the minister has been so derelict in her duty and has so failed in her responsibilities that she should resign. That is what the Liberal Party are suggesting this minister should do, that she should resign.
How absurd is the proposition, and what evidence has been brought to bear? What linkages have been made between the two supposed failings—firstly, a position in relation to Calvary hospital? We can go to that briefly and deal with it shortly and, in doing so, outline the absurdity, the nonsense, of the position that anything that Ms Gallagher has done or sought to do in relation to the creation of an integrated public hospital system for the ACT has reflected in any way on her capacity, her ability, her diligence, her expertise and her determination to create the best possible public hospital system in the ACT, in the knowledge that we have two public hospitals and it is absolutely vital that they work in a seamless, fully integrated way.
This is an issue that has sought to be addressed by every health minister since self-government. Ms Gallagher has grappled with the issue in a far more focused way perhaps than any other minister since self-government. What did she do? It was on the basis of advice from the Treasury and on the basis of advice from Health—the two departments from whom one would take advice in relation to how best to create a seamless public health system, how best to invest in health, consistent with the billion-dollar capital upgrade program that this minister has put in place.
Look at this minister’s record of achievement in relation to health. It was Ms Gallagher that developed the capital upgrade program. It was Ms Gallagher that actually grasped the nettle in relation to the needs of this community over the next 10 years with a rapidly ageing population, a significant increase in population and enormous incremental demand. It was this minister, Katy Gallagher, that put the plan in place—the billion-dollar expansion of public health capacity within the territory
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