Page 3761 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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not reflective of the everyday heroism we see across our public healthcare system, of lives being saved, of compassionate, skilled and loving care provided by so many.
I am not interested in a trial by media either. As minister, it has been deeply troubling for me to see ACT Health staff repeatedly criticised over and over about workplace culture issues in the ACT public health system. It is important to me to put in place a process—a safe process—to see this brought to a conclusion and extinguish the politicising of the issue as quickly as possible.
None of this is constructive or healthy for our staff or for our community. Yes, I have been contacted by people who wish to raise concerns, and I follow up on every one of those. I have also repeated the many processes in place within ACT Health that currently exist. I note two new processes have been implemented in recent times: one to work with the Health Services Commissioner for a process independent of ACT Health for staff to raise issues; and one, announced last week by the director-general, of an ACT Health staff advocate.
But equally I have been contacted by many people who are dismayed about the coverage they are reading and the public debate. It does not, in many, many cases, reflect the care they received or the incredibly powerful stories of teams of doctors, nurses and allied health staff coming together to work with patients and families.
These issues now need a safe process for everyone, no longer played out in the gaze of the media and the gaze of the Assembly—a safe process for everyone. And a safe process is what I have announced. A range of legal protections will exist to support people who are engaging in this review of workplace culture in ACT public health service delivery. As I have said, I will have more to say about this in coming days.
The significant funds—potentially tens of millions of dollars—that would be required to support a legalistic royal commission would be better spent on providing critical health and other healthcare services to our community. We can better spend this money on nurses and doctors, getting more people elective surgery and actually improving and saving lives, rather than on a stack of lawyers.
I have received representations from many important professional associations and prominent individuals from within our healthcare system who have told me they are opposed to a board of inquiry approach. To quote from some correspondence I received late last week:
Crises, shortcomings, instability and uncertainty have without a doubt been all too familiar descriptors applied to the ACT Health workplace and events over the past few years. They make for a far better story than the successes, milestones and achievements that have simultaneously existed but are often less “newsworthy”.
This impacts an already stretched health workforce with the risk of resources being disproportionately refocused to address issues surrounding the publicity.
For this reason, we do not support a judicial inquiry into workplace culture within ACT Health.
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