Page 2694 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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because false figures have been put out by this government and by this minister. What does Katy Gallagher do when she is asked about it? She says: “Yes, it has been very hard on me. It has been very hard on me. Just ask my colleagues. If you spoke to my colleagues you would have seen just how hard it was on me, Katy Gallagher.” Well, it is not about whether it is hard on Katy Gallagher. It is about the patients. It is about the community. It is about how they have been deceived by this government.
Firstly, they get poor treatment and then they get lied to about that poor treatment. Does Katy Gallagher really not get that? Where was the apology to the community? Where was the contrition? Instead of focusing on how she felt about it and how politically it may have hurt her, where is the contrition for what her government had done?
It is not the first time. We have seen other examples. For example, the Auditor-General found that downgrades of patients’ urgency categories, often without documented clinical reasons, raised considerable doubts about the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications of patients on the waiting list.
There is a pattern here, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pattern of deception by this government. It is not just one rogue operator because the Auditor-General has already said that there are considerable doubts in other areas. They take their lead from their minister. This is a minister who has gone to elections and said one thing and done the complete opposite after the election. She has hidden the truth at elections. It has become standard for her to do that.
In 2004 there was the infamous school closures promise. We were told that there would be no school closures. Six weeks after the election she broke that promise. I think she beat Julia Gillard to the punch in terms of the speed of that broken promise. No school closures and they closed 23. In 2008, not to be outdone, she was negotiating to buy Calvary. It would have been disastrous. It would have $77 million thrown away. She said she had put all her health plans on the table but she did not share that one. How is the honesty of this minister?
When we look at why things are wrong here, when we look at why things are not going well in our health system, do we really think it is just one or two rogue operators or are they getting a very strong signal from their minister that hiding the truth, fudging the truth, shifting the truth is acceptable? This minister has done it politically, has she not? She has done it in 2004 on schools. She has done it in 2008 on Calvary Hospital. That is the record in the lead-up to the elections—say anything to get through that news cycle, say anything to get through that election and you can worry about keeping the promise or abandoning the promise later on.
We have got a very strong signal from Katy Gallagher. When we look at the performance of our health system under this government, it does not make for pretty reading. Katy Gallagher does not like it when we talk about it. She would prefer us to talk about the fact that they have invested, they have spent, I think we were told by the Treasurer yesterday, an extra 158 per cent in health. Yet they spend $10 million on an MRI scanner that sits there for six months.
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