Page 3090 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
data. It will be interesting to see whether the health minister and Chief Minister has the courage to table that data before the election.
What I find passing strange is that the committee would not agree to recommendations about that data. It is a shame because it is a large budget line. It soaks up a lot of the hospital budget, but there is no recommendation about the doctored data. I would draw members’ attention to page 70, paragraphs 34 and 35, where the committee commends all the staff working at the Canberra Hospital and, in 35, takes the opportunity to congratulate the staff in the ED. Working in a difficult system created by this health minister must be very awkward for people in that regard, but we appreciate their dedication to the task.
There are a number of other chapters, but time does not allow us to go through them all completely. I will go to the other recall. The other recall was, of course, the minister for Indigenous affairs over the Billabong Aboriginal Development Corporation. The committee came to recommendation No 104 on page 220 that says:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs not make decisions about whether organisations are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander on the basis of unsubstantiated statements.
I think it is a real low point in the estimates report where we have a corporation, the Billabong Aboriginal Development Corporation, that is vilified by this minister in many ways, such that he is recalled—and even when he is recalled he apologises but then puts caveats on the apology. It came to light that the action taken against Billabong was because some people had said some things about it. They were unsubstantiated. The minister never checked but he made decisions based on that.
That is no way to run a government, particularly in the area of Indigenous need housing. Of course, because of decisions taken by ACT Housing and through this minister and this government, we do not now have a dedicated Indigenous housing provider in the ACT. Shame on the government and shame on the minister. Indeed, his defence was, I think, destroyed just about every time he changed his defence. For instance, he said that in relation to the definition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ organisations within the constitution of the National Congress of Aboriginal First Peoples, Billabong fell outside. But it just was not true. Even on the recall day, attempting to justify what he said, he got it wrong, as Mr Bourke so often does in this place. He just makes things up, and he made things up in this case. Minister, I draw recommendation 104 to your attention.
In the community day there were a number of groups that said ACT Housing affordability is the worst that it has ever been. Indeed, groups like Shelter, the Youth Coalition and even the elected body said—and I will just read one quote; Shelter explained:
While we applaud the efforts of the government over the past 10 years through a series of affordable housing action plans, we feel this has done very little to alleviate the situation. Housing is now more unaffordable than ever.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video