Page 2101 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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they did not, but things will happen. The important part of the story here is that once the information was identified, Canberra Health Services got onto looking into it and making sure that it was sorted out.
In light of that, it is appropriate that, as members of the Assembly, we ensure that this is adequately dealt with. That is why my amendment also calls on the health minister to report back in the early part of next year on what has been done to overcome any concerns that have been identified and the actions taken to address them. I commend my amendment to the Assembly today.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.31): Madam Assistant Speaker, it is gobsmacking, when you think about it. You have the unity ticket of ACT Labor and the Greens talking about decency and integrity, and saying, “We’re Labor, and what we stand for is wage justice for our workers.” It does not look like it here. It is interesting; I can remember the number of times that Mr Pettersson, you, Madam Assistant Speaker, and various other people have had “stacks on” here and accused people of wage theft—Woolworths, 7-Eleven, George Calombaris and Coles; but when it comes to one of their own, they are amazingly silent. They run an amazing protection racket.
The minister stood up here and said, “How dare Mrs Dunne. She’s never asked for a briefing. She’s never asked my permission to do something in this space.” The minister said that I have had lots of opportunities to have a briefing on this, and referred to all the briefings that I have had over the last little while. They were briefings about our COVID preparedness. It would be entirely and completely inappropriate, and I never ask anything in those briefings which is not pertinent to our COVID preparedness and our COVID recovery. If I ask about what is happening in elective surgery, I am asking about elective surgery because we had shut it down because of COVID. It would be completely and utterly inappropriate.
How dare the minister assume that the only gateway for action in this Assembly is through her. You have seen, Madam Assistant Speaker, just how strongly she stood up for junior doctors here today. She is sitting there and saying, “There’s nothing to see here.” This motion is not about an investigation into how we fix the pay system. We know that the pay system is broken. This motion calls for an audit to ensure that not just the current crop of young doctors, junior doctors, but their predecessors for six years—because that is the statutory time frame that we are working in—have not been underpaid. If they have been underpaid, they should be reimbursed. If they have been overpaid, knock yourself out; go and seek people to pay it back, where they have been overpaid.
That is what this motion is about. Mr Rattenbury is trying to create a fig leaf of respectability because he has to stay in the Labor Party camp by coming up with his version of things, which says, “We’re being respectful; we have an ongoing commitment to ensuring that staff are treated with respect and are paid fairly and accurately.” At this precise moment there are wardsmen, other health professionals and junior doctors who are not being paid fairly and accurately. It is not happening now.
Ms Lawder: It is called wage theft.
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