Page 5930 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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If the Minister for Health thinks that she has provided the outcome for those staff, why were they not informed? Why have they not been informed? Why is the president of the royal college of obstetricians and gynaecologists saying that the staff he has spoken to at the Canberra Hospital are describing a sense of dread and fear at the Canberra Hospital if this is all something that has been dealt with so well by the minister?
The Greens make another couple of calls. They describe this as inappropriate and they call on the government to provide the Assembly with details of changes to bullying policies or procedures. Now they want to know what all the changes in the policies and procedures are. These are the same Greens who, when I wanted to know what the staff culture survey results were and have a look at that, did not want a bar of that: “No; we do not need to know what the government is doing behind closed doors.” Remember this open government that Mr Stanhope talked of in 2001? It seems that the Greens rhetorically support this, but when it comes to the reality they do not.
Let us have a look at a now very famous—I would consider infamous—individual, Julian Assange. Let us see what Bob Brown is saying about him and about the release of information, shall we? He put out a media release entitled “Assange’s rights should be upheld”. You can hear it now, can’t you, from Bob Brown? What he says, in part, in his defence of Julian Assange, is:
It is important that we know what drives governments to make decisions.
Isn’t that remarkable? Bob Brown, in defence of Julian Assange, says that we should have information that allows governments to make decisions. But what happens when
it comes to the opposition wanting to know the very same thing? We might want to know about a staff culture survey. What about the Costello review? What was that one called, Mr Smyth?
Mr Smyth: The functional review.
MR HANSON: The functional review. What about that? Would that not fit in the category, I ask any of the Greens members, of it being important that we know “what drives governments to make decisions”? It is okay that Mr Assange can spread everything to do with a sensitive national security matter across the media. He can leak that as he likes: that is fine and the Greens support that. They defend it. They put out a press release saying, “Good on you, Julian, for doing that.” But when we want to know why this government made decisions—where are they? Where are they on that?
Let us look at some of the other things. Last October I wanted to put Calvary and what was going on with Calvary to the Auditor-General, because I thought that was an issue that we needed to get all the relevant information about. Did the Greens support that? No. Clearly, that was not something that Julian Assange wanted.
How about when Ms Gallagher came forward with the Calvary change in accounting standards? I had a motion in this place in August last year that called on the minister to table all accounting advice she had been provided in full. That sounds pretty reasonable. That sounds pretty consistent with Bob Brown in his defence of Julian
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