Page 547 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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Mr Hanson: It is better.
MS GALLAGHER: We were talking about nurse-led walk-in centres. I said you would close the nurse-led walk-in centres, which is what you were doing. So there is honesty. I said I would not close the nurse-led walk-in centres—exactly right. I am not closing them; I am opening up two new ones. Doubling the funding and opening two—one in Tuggeranong and one in Belconnen. That is exactly what we are doing.
Any honest reading of my address to the party faithful and any honest reading of our policy which we took to the last election clearly outlines the agenda I had in relation to nurse-led walk-in centres and which I am fulfilling comprehensively and completely by the middle of this year to ensure they open for the benefit of their local areas. I am very happy to stand up here and provide that input into this unusual motion.
If there is anyone who is not telling the truth here it is you, Mr Hanson. I have been very clear about what I intended to do with the walk-in centres. We are delivering on that. More money is going into them. They will be very popular in the community. Yes, it gets them off the hospital site, which, for various reasons, was where the centre started, but it is not necessarily the best place for the centre to continue.
So nice try, Mr Hanson. My honesty, my integrity and my credibility remain fully intact despite repeated, consistent attempts by the Canberra Liberals to question it, to raise doubts about it, to run campaigns against me. Look at the campaign the Canberra Liberals ran against me in the last election campaign if you want to talk about attacks. You ran two-minute ads on me attacking my integrity, my credibility and my honesty. I put out one media release saying Mr Hanson said he was going to close the nurse-led walk-in centre, and we are still talking about it. Two years later we are still coming here talking about who was right and who was wrong. I merely reported what I heard on ABC radio, and now we are delivering on the commitments we took to the election.
As to everything else, despite repeated and consistent attempts to cast doubt on my integrity and my honesty, the Canberra Liberals over many years have failed to make a case, or the case has not been listened to by the community. The telling part of the last election campaign was the ad they started with, which was a two-minute attack ad on me, and then the ad they finished with, which was a nice, softly spoken female character saying, “You know what? I really like Katy Gallagher,” dot, dot, dot. Again, that showed exactly what your research was telling you, which was people think I act with integrity.
Mr Hanson: They believe your lies.
MS GALLAGHER: No, they believe I act with integrity, that I am an honest politician, despite repeated attempts to cast doubt upon that. This is another attempt to do that. It is an attempt that it is going to fail because the facts just do not add up.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.37): I am sure Mr Hanson would be well aware that this motion is misleading in that it only uses half the health minister’s quote on
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