Page 3677 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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more open, more accountable”. He said, “We will not hide behind commercial in confidence.” And what does he do at every turn? He hides behind commercial in confidence.
What have the Canberra Liberals said from the start of this sad and sorry affair? The secret plan started in August 2008, when the Minister for Health said, “All our plans are on the table”—all of them except this one, the largest and probably the most far-reaching plan, to purchase the Calvary hospital from the Little Company of Mary. Recall, members, that she wanted this deal stitched up with a heads of agreement before the caretaker convention kicked in in September 2008. That is the sort of deal Katy Gallagher does. The minister has said repeatedly that this is the deal—
Ms Gallagher: It was actually LCM that wanted it signed before caretaker.
MR SMYTH: But you agreed to it. She said, “That is what the LCM did.” You did not have to agree to it, Treasurer.
Ms Gallagher: They wanted it.
MR SMYTH: You did not have to agree to it.
Ms Gallagher: And we did not.
MR SMYTH: If that is the way you want to conduct your business, that is fine. What we have said from the start is that this is an accounting treatment. We were right. Right from the start—if you go back to everything Mr Hanson said and everything that I said—we said that fundamentally this is an accounting treatment. It is confirmed by the fact that this work was not done by the Department of Health; it was done in Treasury. It was looking at the bottom line. Initially there were no health outcomes in this. They wanted to find a way to spend the money.
Four individuals that I can now name gave them options to spend the money without purchasing it. It is interesting to note that at last the minister finally acknowledged two of them in her speech. Tony Harris, the former Auditor-General of New South Wales, said that it was a contrivance—that the way that this government was going about it was a contrivance. It is a contrivance. And Terry Dwyer—Dr Dwyer MBA, doctor of law from Harvard, MBA at Harvard, a reasonably well qualified individual—
Mr Hanson: PhD.
MR SMYTH: PhD from Harvard. Andrew Podger, a well respected individual with decades of service in the federal public service, said—
Ms Gallagher: And they all said something different, every single one of them.
MR SMYTH: That is right. They all said something different. They all offered you alternative routes to end this dilemma. You chose to simply ignore them. Sinclair Davidson did the analysis. Remember that the Treasurer cum health minister said,
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