Page 949 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
this process over coming months,” the minister said. The restructure was apparently going to fix the problem, although nobody was told exactly how it was going to fix the problem. The problems are not fixed and now we have had the new setup in the health department for some time.
No-one can tell me how the restructure has helped with any of these issues and exactly how it was meant to. The restructure has been promoted as a solution, but a solution to which problem exactly? How will the restructure achieve this solution? None of this has been outlined, evaluated or eventuated.
When I asked Health officials why we had restructured, they could not tell me. They said that it was the fashion in hospital management. It is not an explanation as to how it will help. We have learned that staff have been completely cynical that any change will ever occur. Is it any wonder that staff are completely exasperated when even in the last couple of weeks the Health administration showed its attitude toward staff in a report in the Canberra Times.
The report outlined that a member of staff had written into the HACS inquiry with a formal submission saying that women were not being asked permission before being given vaginal examinations. What was the response of the government? The government said that what was said in that submission was not necessarily accurate and that it was not necessarily true. That was the message from the government in a statement the next day after that article.
Yet again the government says, “You are probably wrong.” This goes to the heart of the problems of trust by staff. Why would you trust someone when you put yourself on the line and make a submission to a committee, which is a privileged document in this place, and then get told by the government, and therefore by this minister, that what you have said is probably wrong? What an embarrassment. What a disgrace.
This minister should stand down. Nobody has any confidence when the answer to someone’s complaint is, “It is probably untrue.” No wonder there have been longstanding issues in the management of the hospital and for the staff.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (11.50): I want to speak today about the issue of what Mr Barr describes as the biggest infrastructure spend in health in the ACT’s history. But in reality it the biggest con ever perpetrated on the people of the ACT in our history. I will go through this sad history, and it is a sad history. It is this government’s failure to properly invest in the Canberra Hospital and properly rebuild this hospital that has in many ways led to the overcrowding, the pressure and the problems that we see today.
I will go back a little in history. The reality is that in 2011 this government put $41 million into the budget with an announcement that they were going to spend $800 million to rebuild the Canberra Hospital. That was their announcement. They put out figures in the budget. They put $41 million in the budget. That was the plan. They put $375 million into the forward estimates for that proposal.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video