Page 872 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 18 March 2015

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That this Assembly:

(1) notes the:

(a) toxic management culture of the ACT Ambulance Service;

(b) year-long battle to get the former Minister for Police and Emergency Services to agree to a review;

(d) initial completion date of August 2014;

(e) amended completion date of December 2014; and

(f) review is yet to be made public; and

(2) calls on the Minister to table the complete review by the close of business today.

The government today released their version of a report that should be made public. It is called Enhancing Professionalism—A Blueprint for Change. And when you look through the government’s report you would think that there might be an outline of the nature of the problem, the scope of the problem, the penetration of the problem. But when you go through the report, there is nothing.

If members cast their minds back to the headlines concerning the toxic management culture in the ACT Ambulance Service that prompted this inquiry and look for the word “toxic”, if you do a word search of the government’s document, the word “toxic” does not appear. It has been sanitised, and that is the problem with what the government have presented to the community today. It is not an answer to the problems because they refuse to acknowledge the problems.

The brief history, as we all know, is that, after battling for a year, Minister Corbell, the then minister who is now clearly not the minister, agreed to an inquiry into the toxic management culture within the ACT Ambulance Service. It then took eight months to determine the terms of reference. If you agree there is a toxic management culture, your duty of care as a minister is to ensure that something is done about it quickly. It took eight months to get to the terms of reference.

We had an initial completion date of August last year, but that passed. We were then promised a completion date of December last year, and that also passed. As we know, the review is yet to be made public, even though we have got the government’s answer to the review. Yes, we have a blueprint for the future. But I am afraid the blueprint fails, and it fails because this minister, Minister Burch, asked that the original report be sanitised.

For members’ interest, there is a letter that the Transport Workers Union of Australia circulated to their members on Monday afternoon. It says:

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