Page 750 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 March 2019
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I would like to mention that the Canberra Liberals have had nothing positive to say about the ACT public health system. They are masters of relentless negative commentary. I believe this approach is destructive and disrespects the staff who have had the courage to come forward and participate in this review. I hope this now stops. I hope that all of us are able to make a positive change, support the recommendations of the final report and especially support the staff who work tirelessly every day to deliver health care to Canberrans.
The panel has provided a clear way forward. I again thank the members for their expertise, their leadership and their compassionate approach in the conduct of this review. And I thank staff for their engagement throughout the process. I look forward to working with staff across the public health system as we implement the changes that will ensure that the ACT public health system is the best can be.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.23): I welcome the opportunity to make some comments in Hansard in relation to this very important report. It is interesting to hear the change in expression from the minister over the period of time. I think it is worth reminding members in this place and, through this place, the community that this is a minister who said that we did not have a cultural problem in the hospital, that we had respectful pathways for dealing with bullying and harassment, and that there was zero tolerance of bullying and harassment in the ACT government. This culture inquiry is not the culture inquiry that the Canberra Liberals called for, but we do not in any way diminish the significant work done by the inquiry and the recommendations they have brought forward.
It is interesting that the minister, who was brought kicking and screaming to this place, has not apologised to the people of the ACT and has not apologised to the health work force for her persistent maintenance that there was not a problem in relation to workplace culture and bullying in the Canberra health system, even now, with the report that we have. As the minister says, it is difficult reading. It was reported to me by someone who read the interim report the weekend it came out that that person, who no longer works at Canberra Hospital, actually found it physically distressing to read the report and to have to revisit the things that she experienced at the Canberra Hospital and in the ACT health service. That has been reported to me over and over again.
I and my colleagues do not resile from standing up for those staff who are physically sick reading the accounts about how they were treated for years. One person that I came across recently had more than five years of being marginalised and given busywork to do: a trained professional who has lost touch with her profession because of the way she was treated in the Canberra Hospital system.
The persistence and the resilience of those people are absolutely gobsmacking: that they would be so brave as to persist as long as they have. They have had, to some extent, a voice through this report. But, as the president of the AMA said the other day, there is unfinished business. There are many people who have not received acknowledgement of their circumstances and the way that they were treated. They have not received an opportunity for reconciliation and recompense for the way that they have been treated.
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