Page 3382 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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It will have a devastating effect upon business. It stands to reason. We saw it last time. And we did see the localised effect of those cuts that John Howard and the Liberal Party engineered last time, when there was nobody to stand up for Canberra. Even Brendan Smyth who was part and parcel of the crew did not do it then when he was actually part of the crew. He did not do it when he was part of the government, part of the party that actually made the promise.
He did not stand up in the internal party room. I bet he did not stand up in the Liberal party room up there when he had his couple of months of glory. He did not stand up in that party room and say, “Oh, John, I don’t think you should do that. This is my town. These are my people.” The consequence of that was the loss of 4,000 jobs in Tuggeranong, the place he pretends to represent. (Time expired.)
Canberra Hospital—alleged bullying
MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Health. I refer to the recent review of service delivery and clinical outcomes at public maternity units in the Australian Capital Territory. It found:
The Canberra Hospital management team appears to lack cohesion and a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. Formal lines of responsibility appear to have been regularly breached.
Minister, why does the Canberra Hospital management team lack cohesion and a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities?
MS GALLAGHER: This is an issue that we have been working on for some time at the Canberra Hospital. As members will know, we have not had a permanent general manager in the Canberra Hospital for some time. Since Bill Stone left about 18 months ago, we have had somebody acting in that job. It was my decision not to put in a permanent replacement until we had replaced the Chief Executive of ACT Health, because it is essential to get the general manager’s job at the hospital right, and I think the Chief Executive of ACT Health needs to make that appointment. So there has been, I think, some uncertainty around roles at the hospital during this time.
As members would also know, I have been meeting with doctors over the last year around ways to strengthen governance arrangements within the hospital. Some of it has happened. Some of the devolving of responsibility out of the hospital has occurred with the creation of streams within ACT Health. So we have the cancer stream, for example, that is not part of the governance arrangements of the Canberra Hospital, yet many of the doctors work in the Canberra Hospital. We have been meeting with doctors for some time now, and a restructure document has been released which is currently being consulted on with staff. We will look to implement that as soon as we have received all of the feedback and worked through some of the issues that the unions have raised.
MR SPEAKER: Supplementary, Mr Doszpot?
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