Page 541 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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(2) calls on the Health Minister to apologise to the community for dishonestly hiding Labor’s plans to close the Walk in Centre at The Canberra Hospital.
We will see whether I have as much success as Mr Coe did with his motion. I will be relying on the Greens to support this motion, which is always a tenuous activity. We will see whether Mr Rattenbury is going to ever hold a government to account and ever hold its ministers to account. Based on past experience, I think this might be another motion that I will lose today, but we shall see. I would like to be surprised.
I will start today by quoting from the Chief Minister in her speech on a vote of no-confidence that was moved on her in August 2012 when she was defending the data doctoring scandal:
When I entered this parliament back in 2001 I made a promise to myself and to the community I represent to always work hard, to work diligently, to always act in the best interests of the community, to act honestly, to act with decency and to act with integrity. I have stayed true to that promise, and I always will.
As she spoke those very words in August 2012 she was at that same time deliberately misleading the community about her intent with regard to the Canberra Hospital nurse-led walk-in centre. So Katy Gallagher was here saying she acts with integrity, she acts with honesty, she acts with decency.
I am sorry to say that she did not when it came to the ED scandal. And as I will show you today, she did not when it came to the Canberra Hospital nurse-led walk-in centre. At the same time as this minister was saying that she was going to keep that walk-in centre open, she knew that was not true. And that is not honest. At the same time as she said she always acts with decency, she was at the spearhead of a smear campaign against the Canberra Liberals for having the audacity to actually put an honest position on the table. And that was not decent. At the same time as she was saying that she always acts with integrity, she was misleading the community during an election campaign. And that is not acting with integrity.
But I do not suppose we should have been surprised because the minister has form. For those that have not been in this place as long as perhaps Mr Smyth, Mr Corbell or others, let me take you back to the 2004 election. In 2004 Katy Gallagher was the education minister and it was then that her spokesman—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Lawder): Can you refer to her as Ms Gallagher.
MR HANSON: Sure, I will refer to her as Ms Gallagher. Her spokesman said, “There’ll be no school closures. No school closures under Labor. No, we’re not going to close any schools.”
Ms Gallagher: This is a stump speech. It’s your favourite!
MR HANSON: Yes, it is a stump speech. And it is worth reminding people of your form, is it not, so they are warned by—
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