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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 982 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

There is no indication whatsoever and no evidence whatsoever that there were any other dogs or animals involved; but the inquiries we have in place at the moment will look at that, to ensure that that is the case. At this stage we have no evidence to suggest otherwise, and I do not think Mr Berry has any evidence to suggest otherwise either. I think that what we are doing is appropriate. I do not believe that we should be running off to six inquiries into this particular issue, or even five, necessarily.

Mr Wood: One decent one.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Wood, are you suggesting, as Mr Berry was, that the fraud investigation unit is not a decent inquiry?

Mr Berry: It is not an inquiry about the professional standards in the hospital.

MRS CARNELL: That is exactly what it is about. The fraud investigation unit is looking at abuse of public assets, inappropriate use of assets, and how it could have happened. The hospital inquiry is looking at procedures, how this could have happened in the circumstances. The Medical Board is looking at the professionalism of the doctors involved. The Clinical Privileges Committee is looking at the ethics of this situation. So we have the procedures being looked at, the ethics being looked at, whether these doctors should have their registration looked at is being looked at, the usage of public facilities is being looked at; whether using public facilities for this sort of purpose would constitute fraud under the Act is being looked at.

For the life of me, I cannot see what else you can look at with regard to this particular circumstance. It was not acceptable behaviour at all. The two doctors involved have been hauled over the coals; they have admitted that it was not an acceptable approach. People at the hospital are well aware of it and, I think, are very negative to the approach these two doctors have taken. I think the approach that we as a Government have taken has closed off all of those loopholes. What Mr Berry is trying to do here has nothing to do with the incident of the dog at all; it is straight political grandstanding.

MR OSBORNE (11.30): Mr Speaker, I would like to echo many of the thoughts and comments of my colleague Mr Berry, and I will be supporting this proposal of his. It certainly is one of the most bizarre episodes I have ever heard of. Like most members in this house, I was a little taken aback when I heard that a dog had been treated at Woden Valley Hospital. I thought it was a big joke. It was a lot like when someone told me that Harold Hird had been elected at the last election. I thought, "Come on; pull the other one". To find that this story is true is absolutely beyond belief. If the Canberra Times had printed it in the paper a few days later, on 1 April, nobody would have believed it. Yet it happened, and now Mr Berry has put up what I think is a sensible proposal.

The most offensive thing for me in this fiasco has been the attitude of the doctors involved. We all saw them on A Current Affair on Monday night. They did not care that they had treated the dog in hospital. They simply did not show any remorse at all. I guess that I would be a lot more sympathetic towards them if they were even the slightest bit sorry for what they had done, but to date there has been no real sign of that.

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