Page 587 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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community. The honest answer would have been that maybe there will be school closures or maybe there will need to be school closures. That would have been being up-front, but we did not get it. In 2008 we were told that all plans were on the table, except this major plan, which has now blown up in the minister’s face.
This is the minister who wants to be the next Chief Minister. She wants to take over when Jon calls it quits. She wants to get the handover. We see the outcomes and we will no doubt debate some of the outcomes in health again in later motions. But we see the struggling health system. We see the problems in our health system under her leadership, but it is never her fault. We see it again with Calvary hospital.
Katy Gallagher is seeking to blame everyone else but herself. It could be the church, it could be the Liberals, it could be the Greens, the Palliative Care Society or those pesky economists who do not agree with the analysis. It could be members of her own party who speak out publicly against the deal. It is everyone else’s fault except hers.
It is time, I think, that we actually saw some acknowledgement and heard some acknowledgement that this has been a monumental failure, because what we are left with is a government that has no plan B. It has no plan B. It now has to go back to the drawing board as to what it is going to do in health on the north side of Canberra. It has to go back to the drawing board because it never really seriously considered any of the other options. It talks about some other options, but they were never seriously considered.
They had one option. They had their preferred option and they were going to get it. Maybe some prudent analysis would have said: “Well, can we actually get it? We have tried it before and failed.” They tried it under a previous health minister and they could not get it done.
With that knowledge, you would have expected that the minister would have been prudent and said, “Even if this is a preferred option, let us seriously look at all the other options. Let us look at how we can pursue them,” instead of now having to, essentially and effectively, go back to the drawing board.
They are going back to the drawing board because they put all of their eggs in this basket. They had put all of their plans for the hospital in north Canberra into the plan to buy Calvary. We have seen some erratic comments since then. We saw it encapsulated when the minister went on television on Sunday night and said: “Look, we are looking at all options. Compulsory acquisition, that is something we will consider.”
Then the next morning we heard: “That is a crazy option. Are you serious?” I think that was when the Greens raised it. That is a crazy option. So it went within the space of 12 hours from being an option that they would seriously consider to being a crazy option.
Mrs Dunne: But it is still on the table.
MR SESELJA: Now we are getting the flip-flop and we are being told, “Well, no, it still is on the table.” If this crazy option is on the table, what are the other crazy
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