Page 3149 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
It was gobsmacking to hear Mr Smyth not long ago in his Fountain Lakes-style performance say that maybe the only person with any honour in all of this is the officer who did the tampering. And this was backed up by Mrs Dunne, who appeared to want to give the person a medal. This was the person who did the manipulation of the data. This is not someone who should be seen as the person holding all the honour on this occasion. The Greens’ view on the policy issues behind the data in question is clear, as is our support for measures to be put in place to prevent it from happening again.
As far as the issue of personal integrity goes, which is the crux of the Liberal Party’s argument, I fail to see how the minister could have done more than exclude herself from the investigation. Whether or not she should have gone into greater detail about her relationship with the official concerned I think is ultimately a matter for the electorate to judge. I would say that the idea that we should completely disregard the personal privacy of others concerned in the incident is wrong, and this suggestion by the Canberra Liberals sets a very worrying precedent.
It is telling that, as far as I am aware, the Canberra Liberals have not made a single comment about the measure in question or the way they think things should be changed in order to improve our health system. I think that goes to some of the comments made this morning about the lack of vision, the lack of policy and the lack of ideas about how we can improve our health system and our health delivery here in the ACT.
Against my better judgement I will respond to Mr Hanson. The Greens have never pretended that this is not a serious issue. I will say that, no matter how much he verbals us or twists the facts to suit his ends, the reality is that the Greens have made a judgement about what has occurred based on facts presented to us as found by the Auditor-General and not spun by Mr Hanson.
Certainly it is not the first time the Greens have been verballed by Mr Hanson. What Ms Le Couteur actually said to Mr Hanson—by the way, Ms Le Couteur was not here this morning because she had a previous engagement that she attended—at a function was that the question of confidence in the Chief Minister would be answered by the people at the election in two months time. She said nothing like what Mr Hanson claimed this morning. Once again, we just see “Hard Man” Hanson twisting things, verballing things and not putting up any vision about what we could see in our health system.
He slams the people who work in our health system and then turns around at the end of hearings—and we all cringe—and says: “Oh, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t really mean to say that you were unprofessional and you were hopeless and you’re all incompetent. I didn’t mean it.” Then he turns around again and does it all over again another day. This is having an impact on the hardworking men and women in our health system who are dedicated to the jobs they do every day.
I have had many occasions to have used the health system in this town, and I have received fantastic care for me and my family. It is unfortunate that the only policy
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video