Page 5915 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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The next tactic, after denying that any complaints had been made, was then to dismiss those complaints and attack the doctors. The minister said that this was just a war that had been occurring in obstetrics for 10 years—“a 10-year war”, she said. If she knew that these problems were occurring—the minister knew this—then why did she say earlier that there had been no complaints? Why did she fail to take substantive action on this?
She tried to pass this off. She described these complaints as “doctor politics” and “mud-slinging”. But, as we know from the clinical review, that simply was not the case. There were real issues. We know there were real issues because of the words, “I’m sure you’ve seen the results of this Public Interest Disclosure Act review and it will be fully laid bare saying, ‘There was nothing to see here. Look, Jeremy got it wrong. The doctors got it wrong’.” But because she is not releasing the Public Interest Disclosure Act review I think the only conclusion you can make is that there were substantive issues.
What the government then did—what the minister and the Chief Minister did—was to try to intimidate the doctors. They tried to threaten them. I will quote from what Mr Stanhope said:
… it probably would be reasonable in this context for the external expert reviewer to also perhaps do an audit of all complaints to the medical boards current and say over the past 10 years that involve obstetricians …
What a disgraceful thing to do—to try and dig up dirt, to have a witch-hunt on these doctors who have been bullied, who have resigned, who have bravely come forward. The Chief Minister and the health minister threatened to dig up dirt on them over the last 10 years. That is why the AMA and the national royal college of obstetricians describe this as a witch-hunt, as bullying and as a thinly veiled threat—because that is exactly what it was.
It is quite clear that this was not just doctor politics. These were real concerns that doctors came forward about. It was not just about their own concerns that they had had their careers disrupted—and, in the case of the registrars, severely disrupted. It was about their concerns about the clinical safety of the unit, that it could lead to a dysfunctional workplace where serious injury or, worse, death could occur.
At the time we called for an open inquiry under the Inquiries Act, and for very clear reasons. We wanted to make sure that this was not buried, that we found out what was
going on, that we dealt with the cultural aspects and that we allowed witnesses to come forward. The Greens have asserted, and I think the Labor Party as well, that you did not want this because it would demand that people were called forward and subpoenaed to give evidence.
I think that there were enough people, based on the number of doctors I have spoken to, who said that they had put in reviews to the Public Interest Disclosure Act. In fact, that was never going to be a problem. They wanted to tell their story. A number of them were told that they could not appear because of the time lines on the review that was conducted, that it only looked at information after a certain number of years.
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