Page 1156 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 28 March 2017
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Mrs Dunne is now in receipt of correspondence from the Auditor-General in relation to this letter and the status of the letter. I have not seen that letter.
Mrs Dunne: No, I am not.
MS FITZHARRIS: I am advised that correspondence has been sent from the Auditor-General’s Office regarding the amended motion that has been tabled. This morning my office had further discussions with the Auditor-General’s Office and with the Director-General of the Health Directorate and I can now advise that a copy of this letter can be tabled. I present the following paper:
Health data issues—Copy of letter to the Auditor-General from the Director-General, Health Directorate, dated 8 September 2016.
In relation to Mrs Dunne’s second request I can confirm that no written briefs were provided to the former Minister for Health or me about this particular letter in relation to the associated data issues. While I entirely respect and welcome the inquiry of the Assembly into this matter, my directorate has responded to more than 60 questions on notice from Mrs Dunne, many of which relate to this data issue.
I have answered many questions in this chamber about health data, I have undertaken to provide a briefing to Mrs Dunne on this issue and other health matters and I have made two ministerial statements on health data and today tabled the terms of reference for the system-wide review. Of course I am happy to table this letter today, based on the advice I have received.
I do wish to register my concern that the correspondence between two very senior public servants about the Auditor-General’s forward work program of potential performance audit seems to me to be being politicised in this way. I welcome scrutiny of this issue, but I would encourage members to appreciate the appropriate balance between inquiry and enabling ACT Health to get on with this very important piece of work to get to the bottom of and resolve once and for all some of the issues that we have confronted regarding ACT Health data.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.35): I need to put on the record that the minister seems to have had some briefing about my correspondence with the Auditor-General. I will put on the record the correspondence that I have had with the Auditor-General, which related directly to gaps in the ROGS report. I received some correspondence from the Auditor-General last week, and I would be happy to, just for the sake of completeness, table that correspondence later in the course of the day. The letter that I wrote to the Auditor-General was in relation to the ROGS report and the data gaps in there, and I asked the question: were the gaps in the data in any way related to issues that the Auditor-General raised with me about the correspondence between the Director-General for Health and the Auditor-General?
I have now received a response from the Auditor-General, which says that she is not in a position to more fully answer my questions because there are ongoing inquiries and at this stage she does not have a release from the health department to provide me with the information that I have asked for. For the sake of completeness, I will seek
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