Page 779 - Week 02 - Thursday, 10 March 2011
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The government and the minister had said that that there was only one option and only one way to do it, but they then came back with four options. The minister tabled four options in this place, and we all scurried away to have a look at those four options. The Liberals moved a motion in this place to refer them to the health committee to have a look at them. The health committee has spent much of its time reviewing those four options. I have attended all the meetings, and the committee has sat through all the witnesses coming forward. There have been witnesses coming forward from lots of medical organisations and community organisations. The Little Company of Mary attended and the minister attended in her capacity as both the Treasurer and the health minister. We have now wasted more time. Not only have we wasted all the time on the Calvary proposal that was flawed from its inception, but we then had four other options, which now seem to have been largely discarded because we now seem to have moved on to five options.
I do not know if this is the last stop on this journey. It is difficult to know. Are these the last five options we will be asked to consider? I think we are running out of time to send these to the health committee. What action should we take on these options? Is this the last stop on this rather mysterious journey?
The problem we have with these five options is that the minister is quite adamant that she is going to stick them in the budget. I assume one of these options is going to be the final solution. We have wasted more than two years when we should have been looking at some deliberate options, some considered options. I actually do not mind what has been put forward by the minister now. But instead of having this process two and a half years ago when we could have looked at these options and considered them to see if there were any other better options and had a proper community debate—indeed the government’s own consultation timelines say that for major proposals it should be a minimum of 12 weeks—in less than six weeks, as it turns out now, we are being asked to consider these five options.
I just want to make the point that this has been a very, very poorly managed process. It has been a pretty rocky journey to end up at this point. To see how difficult it has been for the government and this minister to arrive at this point today to come up with just five options does not bode well when thinking about how that will actually be executed when the decision is made and the minister pursues one or the other. If it took two years just to get to the point of having these five options, we can have little confidence in how the final decision will be implemented in the ACT.
It is worth bringing that to the attention of the Assembly as the minister tries to take some sort of credit for solving the problems of ACT Health. Many of the problems are of her own making, and they have been exacerbated by two years of delay, procrastination and a very poorly managed process.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Estimates 2011-2012—Select Committee
Membership
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Mr Speaker has been notified in writing of the following nominations for membership of the Select Committee on
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