Page 5928 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
concerned that not just the minister but other members could become involved in a process that has been formulated to prevent this from occurring, a process which people became involved in with the understanding that that would not occur.
I am very concerned that we could undermine this whole process—that people may be frightened to come forward again if this sort of thing occurs or if public interest disclosure is used again—if we are going to have members trying to get results of that made public when that is not what public interest disclosure is for. It has been put in place to protect people so that they come forward and have their confidentiality protected. We should not be trying to undermine that at all.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (12.11): What a surprise that the Greens are complicit in making sure that information is withheld and scrutiny is denied! What a surprise!
Mr Stanhope: I think they think we should comply with the law.
MR HANSON: I will go through the amendments before getting to some more—
Mr Stanhope: It is called the rule of law. You obey the law.
MR HANSON: Thank you, Mr Stanhope, for your useful interjections.
Mr Stanhope: It is about obeying the law.
MR HANSON: It is not about covering up then, is it, Jon?
Mr Stanhope: No, it is about obeying the law.
MR HANSON: If we look at the Greens’ amendments and what they are removing from my motion, we see that the first point they are removing is that “nine doctors resigned from the unit prior to February 2010 and another doctor has since resigned”. There is no mention in there about why they actually resigned, as Ms Bresnan incorrectly asserted. But it is quite clear, and it is a matter of record—in fact, Ms Gallagher has said it in this place—that in fact nine doctors did resign. It is a bit unclear to me why we would remove that. That is an important part of this, to make it very clear that there have been problems in the obstetrics unit, and that has led to the resignation of a number of doctors.
Ms Bresnan also removed the part that said:
… the Minister and ACT Health officials initially denied that any complaints had been made …
I went through this in my initial speech. Quite clearly, both Peggy Brown, the acting chief executive at that point, and the minister initially denied that any complaints had been made to them. They did so categorically. The minister said so on ABC 666 and the chief executive was quoted on ABC online. I am not sure why we are removing what is a matter of record.
The next point the Greens are removing from my motion is:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video