Page 4340 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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with waiting lists. There were genuine concerns amongst a broad number of people. I raised those in the Assembly. This was back in 2010.
Amanda Bresnan supported me. She said, “Yep, there’s enough to look at here.” The Greens back then said, “Okay, let’s refer this to the Auditor-General. Let’s have her look at it.” As a result of that, she made a number of findings that I referred to before. She talked about the appropriateness of clinical classification for patients on waiting lists. She noted that patients were downgraded following requests from hospitals. She had considerable doubts about reliability and so on.
But more importantly as a result of that review, it was found that the strategies implemented by ACT Health had not been adequate to address the increased demand and reduce waiting lists for elective surgery. The Auditor-General provided 11 recommendations, which have been adopted by ACT Health. I do note that there have been improvements in the waiting times. I commend that. I welcome that. But that is not the issue we are debating here today.
The issue we are debating here today is not whether there has been an improvement in the lists or not—and I acknowledge where there has been. I accept that. I think it is fair to say that I have been pushing for that for some time through various reviews and the media. I think it would be unfair if the minister did not acknowledge that when I have applied pressure to get that done. As she acknowledges in her speech, I have talked about this endlessly.
But as Amanda Bresnan and the Greens recognised back in 2010, before the Greens joined the ministry, when there is such confusion, when the government has track form of saying one thing in this place—denying, denying, denying—and it turns out to be true, let us have a look at it, let us have an independent look at it, and clear it up. If the government has nothing to hide and if what Katy Gallagher says is true, then shine a light.
Mr Rattenbury is talking about shining a light with FOI and a bunch of other things, but we have very specific allegations. We have evidence in terms of letters from Calvary. We have surgeons saying that this is so. We have track form from the government. So why do we not have this investigation? I do not think it would take long. We could bring someone in, have a look at it and then maybe the minister can come into this place, wave the report at me and say, “Look, Jeremy, you were wrong.”
But the last couple of times we had an issue like this and we raised it, the problem was that the minister was wrong. The minister was proven to have been false in her denials. Either she did not know what was going on or she was deliberately misleading. I will leave that to people to determine. But that happened with the issue of elective surgery statistics and manipulation and it occurred with the obstetrics. Allegations were made. When the report came in, it was very clear that over a long period complaints had been made and they were systemically ignored by ACT Health, despite the fact that the minister said in this place there had been no complaints.
We will not be supporting this amendment because what it is trying to do is put the problem under the carpet. I do not know whether the allegations, the concerns raised
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