Page 125 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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a minister’s scalp. I do not remember the last time that occurred. That is not an everyday occurrence. I do not think we can simply dismiss that. Peter Hughes is a respected member of our community and a respected member of the medical profession in the ACT and around Australia, and he has got to a point of such frustration with the minister’s performance that he has called for her resignation.
This is not something to be taken lightly. This is something that we in the Assembly should take very seriously. Is the counterargument that Peter Hughes does not know what he is talking about? Is that what the counterargument is? I have not actually heard his credentials questioned. Maybe they would like to. I am sure that Peter Hughes, as head of the VMOs, would stand up to scrutiny against Katy Gallagher. I am sure that he would not mind comparing credentials in this area.
So we have got the head of the VMOs calling for the resignation and the Auditor-General with a damning report. And this report goes to what happens on the ground and goes to the lack of strategy and the lack of oversight. We heard in question time yesterday the minister effectively saying, “Yes, this has been in place for a few years and it turns out it was not really being followed.” Whose fault is that? Whose fault is it if you put in place a policy that just gets ignored? Who takes responsibility for that, the individual doctors? Does a bureaucrat somewhere take responsibility or does the minister, who has been in charge for five years, has overseen the policy and has never bothered to ask the question?
This is the question that the minister has not answered. How long did she know these policies were not being followed? Was she just blocking her ears? It did not take long for the Auditor-General to find out. Sure, the minister could have found this stuff out if she had asked the question. The issue has been raised. It has been put on the agenda in this place and was denied. It was not that long ago that we had a debate about categories of elective surgery and about the serious claims about downgrading of patients to make the categories look good.
But what did the Auditor-General find? In particular, downgrades of patients’ urgency category, often without documented clinical reasons, raised considerable doubts about the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications for patients on the waiting lists. So the one thing the minister had going for her, the one defence she was putting up, is false. It was the result of downgrades. It was the result of undocumented downgrades. It was the result of the apparent policy in place not being followed. But for years, the minister was doing nothing about it. What kind of minister do we have who just ignores these things, who does not even ask these questions?
We could go on. The Auditor-General found that, in 2009-10, 250 patients in category 1 were reclassified. It is great auditor-general speak, because auditor-generals do not over read things; they tend to under read. And here we have it: 250 patients in category 1 were reclassified. How many of these reclassifications were significant? Ninety-seven per cent! A significant number, some might say an overwhelming number, some might say almost all, occurred without documented clinical reasons—97 per cent!
So we have got a minister who did not bother to look. When these things were raised she denied it. “That was wrong.” She was wrong, again. And we see that pattern of
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