Page 3355 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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minister to get on top of what is happening in obstetrics show that she is incompetent and does not deserve the confidence of this house.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.47): The ministerial code of conduct states:
Being a Minister demands the highest standards of probity, accountability, honesty, integrity and diligence in the exercise of their public duties and functions.
This debate is about, more than anything, diligence. It is about diligence, it is about competence, it is about judgement and it is about the capacity of the minister. This motion really does go to this minister’s capacity to be the Minister for Health and—we all know, with the impending resignation of the Chief Minister—her ability to be the future Chief Minister of this territory. If this minister cannot run Health, how can she run the territory as Chief Minister? That is what we must discuss here today.
House of Representatives Practice states:
The responsibility of ministers individually to parliament is not mere fiction.
That is what those opposite would try to say today: “Nothing to see here. Nothing has happened. Nothing wrong.” And House of Representatives Practice states:
It is through ministers that the whole of the administration—departments, statutory bodies and agencies of one kind and another—is responsible to the Parliament …
The question is: is this minister responsible to the parliament for what she does? The answer is, clearly, yes. And, if the Greens understood that notion of ministerial responsibility, they would be voting for this motion today, because Ms Hunter pointed out quite accurately—and she gave Mr Hanson the credit that he was due—that the two reviews that are currently underway, one into obstetrics and one into bullying through the Public Interest Disclosure Act, are only occurring because Mr Hanson took up the case of those individuals who were allowed to be bullied through the lack of diligence of this minister.
The report clearly says, and Mr Hanson has read the quote, that members of staff tried to make these complaints but were ignored. Ministerial responsibility kicks in when a minister becomes aware of a failing, or something untoward, going on in her department. When we asked the minister, “When did you become aware?” she said, “Well, everybody has known about the 10-year war in obstetrics.” So, if you knew about the war in obstetrics and you are the minister directly responsible for that department, the question then has to be asked: “What did you do to stop it?” And the answer is that, until held accountable by the Canberra Liberals, the minister did nothing. She was partisan. She took one view without any attempt to garner the knowledge of the other view. That is where she failed, that is where she was not diligent, that is where she lacked competence and that is where she lacked judgement. And that is the case for why this minister should go.
If you look at the motion, the motion that those opposite clearly ignored, there is every reason to have no confidence in Katy Gallagher as the Minister for Health,
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