Page 3754 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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Put simply, the issues raised and the initiatives underway to address them, and the independent external validation of ACT Health by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, demonstrate that a judicial process of this magnitude and seriousness, effectively a royal commission, is not warranted.
However, in recognition of a number of issues raised, and in further consideration of and in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, I have announced that the ACT government will undertake an independent review of the workplace culture in the delivery of public healthcare services in Canberra. I will return to that shortly, but first I will outline why I believe that a board of inquiry, indeed a royal commission, is not necessary.
A royal commission into a workplace culture is simply not warranted. Matters of workplace culture are about leadership, governance and people. They are not matters that should be subject to the strongest of judicial powers. They are not matters that should subject people to cross-examination. They are not matters for which teams of lawyers, whether in public or private, should be allowed to cross-examine health employees about their work life. A royal commission would not protect people from vexatious claims potentially aired in public.
I believe calls for a full board of inquiry are misguided, as it would have the potential to seriously damage professional and personal lives—the lives of our health workforce—and not be a process of learning, healing and improving. And that is what I want to achieve here—not a witch-hunt but a process that delivers a positive workplace culture, recommendations for improvement and a process where people may be held to account for bullying or harassment.
As the peak body representing patients, the Health Care Consumers Association have said:
A Board of Inquiry tends to be steeped in blame culture. It is often adversarial and has a focus on past wrongs. We have been concerned about the rhetoric that some stakeholders want to see health department executives ‘grilled in public’. We do not see this as helpful and are concerned that this model could further undermine confidence in our health system. We want the review to look at causes and contributing factors to the current issues of workplace culture. We want staff to be able to identify the things that are getting in the way of them delivering safe and high-quality care to the people of Canberra and the region.
That last point is the most important point. What is the purpose of a review and what is the outcome that we all want to achieve? I would hope that we all want a review that gives us real recommendations about how we can improve. I have no doubt there will be some challenging recommendations and, as minister, I will face these head on, as I do every day in this job.
I have fronted up every day in this job to answer questions and be honest and up-front with the Canberra community about what needs fixing, and I will continue to do that. But I also have an enormous responsibility to the Canberra community to protect our community’s best interests and the best interests of our health staff.
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