Page 2430 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Company of Mary Healthcare and the ACT government enter into a heads of agreement.
So she was denying at the election that there was any plan on the table, and then when we do catch her out, on the fact that she had an agreement, she said: “No, it’s the Little Company of Mary.” And we have evidence that it was not. She continued:
To enable further development of the proposal past the commencement of caretaker period, which takes effect on 12 September, my preference—
my preference—
is that the heads of agreement be signed on that date.
But she said, without knowing perhaps that we have a copy of that letter, in this place:
Talk about rewriting history! I was not attempting to have rushed through a heads of agreement. Little Company of Mary … time requested that a heads of agreement be signed …
This is the honest Katy Gallagher, the open Katy Gallagher, who hid her plans for Calvary and, when she was caught, tried to blame it on Little Company of Mary, and we have written evidence that that was not true.
There is the issue also of elective surgery waiting lists. A lot of allegations were made about the lists and whether they are being manipulated, whether there were problems with the lists. She attacked me in this place and accused me of besmirching the staff. Because I said there were problems with the lists and the way they were being handled, she said: “No, there isn’t. You’re besmirching the staff.” But it turns out that that is not true, because what the Auditor-General found, despite Katy Gallagher not wanting the review, saying that there were no problems, is:
… the classification of clinical urgency categories did not always reflect ACT Health’s policy and procedures, and therefore raised doubts on the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications for patients within the waiting list.
We can go further and look at the bush healing farm. You might remember that one, Madam Assistant Speaker, where there was an FOI document that came out of her department which had been deleted in part, quite clearly with the intent of covering up the fact that a vineyard or cellar door was proposed for that location. I then received a letter that was, in my view, a threatening letter from the chief executive of her department, after I had released a press release claiming a cover-up. So rather than responding to the FOI and saying, “It looks like a mistake has been made and here’s the document,” the response was to get a threatening letter and then Katy Gallagher fighting that all the way. That is absolutely disgraceful. It was a cover-up and Katy Gallagher did everything she could to make sure that that occurred.
Also, when I was fairly new to this place I started making comments about the fact that Katy Gallagher was holding the Treasury and the Health portfolios. I said that that was a lot of work and I thought that Health was missing out because of her
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