Page 3118 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There is only one question and one result that must come as a consequence of these failings—the Assembly must tell her to go. That is what we are now demanding. It is what the community would expect us to demand, and it is what this Assembly should now do.
It is clear that Katy Gallagher does not meet the standards set by her own previous leaders or that required by the community. But her ministers and the crossbench will not apply that same standard today. They will support a failed chief minister, an incompetent chief minister and a dishonest chief minister, to their shame. Katy Gallagher no longer has the credibility to serve as a minister and no longer deserves the right to sit at the head of government. We will not sit silent while our citizens suffer under the worst health system in the country. We will not allow the biggest lie ever told to our community to go uncriticised, and we will never stand for a chief minister who stands in this place and attacks her doctors, bullies her staff, buries the evidence and then lies to her community and to this chamber.
Enough of the failures, enough of the bullying, enough of the lies. For the sake of our health system, our health staff and our community, this Chief Minister must go.
MS GALLAGHER: (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.27): As members would be aware, it is my normal practice to debate matters that come before this chamber in a serious and considered fashion; to show respect for the forms and the practices of the Assembly, even when I disagree with the substance of what is being discussed. But today we have a motion that is simply beneath the contempt of this place. It is a motion designed not for any substantive accountability or scrutiny purpose; it is purely for political effect. It is an unserious motion brought by an unserious party, a party with nothing to offer but the politics of innuendo, conspiracy and muck.
Regardless of the truth, regardless of the effects on the lives of others, regardless of the decency or decorum that Canberrans expect of their political leaders, Mr Seselja, ably assisted by his hollow health shadow, Jeremy Hanson, persists in this tawdry strategy—of slinging mud instead of engaging in ideas, of casting aspersions instead of constructing a policy platform. It is not the strategy of a serious alternative government. It is not the strategy of a party of honour or ideas. It is the strategy of bullies and of wreckers.
The matters raised in this motion have been canvassed extensively and dealt with conclusively by a forensic audit undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Select Committee on Estimates, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Auditor-General.
An action plan has already been put in place to address the recommendations of the two audits carried out, including new data collection and validation processes. I have written to all of my colleagues interstate, and I understand several of them are looking at their own data processes in light of the learnings in the Auditor-General’s report. We will, of course, respond to the PAC report in due course. None of these investigations, none of the evidence presented and none of the conclusions arising from any of these independent processes found any wrongdoing on my part. None!
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video