Page 2162 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
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unreasonably, I think, ought to have been addressed on a more frank and transparent basis.
Ms Gallagher’s approach to answering the committee’s questions on health also drew attention. In response to a question on notice—health No 197—which asked the minister why the 2006-07 outcome for a particular indicator was significantly higher than the target—it was five per cent above the target—the Minister for Health responded by saying, “The result is not significantly above the target.” Full stop, end of answer. There was no explanation as to why it was above target at all. We still do not know if there was any reason for this.
The minister has obviously decided that five per cent above target is not significant, so that ends the matter—no need to talk about it at all. Maybe it is significant; maybe it is not. The point is that the question clearly asked why the government failed to meet the target. We did not ask the minister to simply dismiss the question in its entirety. It is just one instance in a long line of statements that shows the bureaucratic mindset of the minister: ask her a question and you get some sort of hairsplitting answer or a rebuttal.
Mr Barr, in his answers to question on schools, also put in a sterling performance. He got in on the act, trying his best to avoid a serious issue raised by Mrs Dunne in estimates hearings. In estimates committee hearings of 20 June, Mrs Dunne raised a serious issue of a violent incident alleged to have occurred in an ACT school when a teacher was teaching two groups of students in two separate classrooms simultaneously; that is, the teacher was going between one room and the other to teach, so one room was unsupervised at each time.
The minister attempted to play dumb on the issue until Mrs Dunne reminded him that he had previously admitted this incident in a letter. If you would like to review this exchange for yourself, I invite you to read the transcript of the hearing, which went along the following lines:
MRS DUNNE: Are there problems with supervision? For instance, an incident has come to my attention and to your attention where there was an act of violence because one teacher was supervising two classes in two separate rooms. When you put them together, they were supervising the right number of children, but there were two separate rooms where two classes were going on simultaneously. How often does that happen apart from the—
Mr Barr then interposed:
As a result of the EBA, no change.
Mrs Dunne went on to say:
No change. So this was happening before then—where you have people running two classes simultaneously?
The minister then said:
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