Page 339 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 14 February 2017
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The minister was the Assistant Minister for Health for most of last year and was the spokesman on health through the ACT election; she would have clearly known well before December that there were issues with data which had been reported to the Auditor-General back in September. This statement made by the minister today raises more questions than it answers.
We need to know exactly what the problems are with the data. The minister has failed to account in her statement for the work that has already been done by the Auditor-General and with experts advising the Auditor-General on the data issues in the hospital and the reports that are pending there.
The minister needs to come clean with the Assembly and tell the Assembly when she first knew that there were problems with this data and why, when the annual report was tabled in December this year, there was not some caveat about the data then. If there is a problem with the data in the ROGS report and there are problems with data in relation to the AMA report cards which are coming out, there are potentially problems with the data in the annual report, and I think it is incumbent upon the minister to have highlighted that to the Assembly.
As I have said, this matter raises more questions than it answers. I will be discussing with my colleagues and others in this place whether or not this issue should be referred to the health committee for inquiry and report, because this needs to be dealt with in a very open way.
I will have much more to say on this matter in the coming weeks, but that is sufficient for the time being.
Debate (on motion by Mr Wall) adjourned to the next sitting.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs
Ministerial statement
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Community Services and Social Inclusion, Minister for Disability, Children and Youth, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations) (10.40): Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Assembly today. On 13 February 2008 the nation stopped as the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, gave the nation’s apology for the stolen generations. In the apology then Prime Minister Rudd apologised:
… for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians … for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country
and
for the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind.
The ACT Legislative Assembly also showed its support and solidarity by reaffirming the ACT’s own apology first given in this Assembly. On 17 June 1997 the then Chief
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