Page 286 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 20 February 1990
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Public Asset Sales
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Minister for Health. Is the Minister aware of the Opposition's attempts to involve elements of the Health Department in its campaign to undermine possible future government asset sales?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, this question is fairly fortuitous, given the previous question asked of Mr Kaine. I think Mr Kaine has already amply set out the circumstances under which citizens of the Territory can and should participate in the political process. He also indicated that there are limits on the way in which public servants might exercise that same free speech, particularly during hours of employment. This whole question took on a new complexion when it came to my attention, just in the last 24 hours, that the Leader of the Opposition has been writing to people within the ACT bureaucracy seeking their support for obvious and blatant political campaigns. It might assist members if I were to table this letter sent by Ms Follett to, in this case, one of the community health centres in the ACT. I present the following paper:
Public asset sales - Copy of letter from R. Follett, MLA, to Melba Community Health Centre, dated 14 February 1990.
As members are aware, the health centre is a facility run by the Department of Health. It is completely staffed by officers of my Department. The only non-departmental personnel at that particular centre is a visiting specialist who uses the centre for one session a week. The letter, as members will see, is a fairly shallow attack on so-called Government asset sales which, I might point out, are entirely hypothetical at this stage. It makes the comment, inter alia:
Why is Mr Kaine so anxious to rush headlong into selling parts of our hospital system, our schools, our swimming pools, our public transport system, our public housing -
and then it says at the end:
Accordingly I invite you and your organisation to consider joining a public campaign to stop the asset sales program of Mr Kaine.
Mr Speaker, that is in my view an entirely inappropriate thing to be asking public servants in this Territory to be doing. I call on the Leader of the Opposition to stand by her professed devotion to the Westminster system and to desist from trying to involve public servants in this very blatant attempt at politicisation.
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