Page 589 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 2010
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Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (12.21): I have listened with some dismay most particularly to the absolutely outrageous attack which Mrs Dunne has just made on the staff of Canberra Hospital and on the quality of care. Describing Canberra Hospital—perhaps the leading public hospital in the nation—as a hospital infected with a toxic work environment, a hospital that is toxic in its operations, cannot be described as anything other than an attack on the staff of Canberra Hospital. This is an unsubstantiated, vicious attack on Canberra Hospital, on all of the staff of Canberra Hospital. There is no way now of diluting or diminishing what it is that the Liberal Party, and most particularly Mrs Dunne on behalf of the Liberal Party, have just done.
Mr Hanson: Is anybody listening to you, Jon?
MR STANHOPE: They are listening. I can tell you now that all of the staff in ACT Health, all of the staff at the Canberra Hospital, have listened. They will now be responding individually to the description of them and the service that they provide to the people of Canberra as toxic. And then, of course, to extrapolate that it is the government’s determination to transplant this toxic community from the Canberra Hospital to Calvary hospital—there is no diminishing it and there is no walking away from it. There is no pretending that you, the Liberal Party, through Mrs Dunne, have not just made the most remarkable and offensive attack possible or imaginable on an exemplary hospital that provides outstanding service to the people of Canberra. It always has and hopefully will in the future as it responds on an individual and collective level to these unsubstantiated and vicious attacks on the quality of service provided to the people of Canberra. I believe the Canberra Hospital to be the best hospital in Australia. I do not believe there is anybody that can seriously or objectively dispute that. To have this self-serving—
Mr Hanson: The nine doctors who left might.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Hanson disagrees with that. The shadow spokesperson for health disagrees with me publicly. He does not believe it is a good hospital. He does not believe that it is staffed by good, professional, hardworking, dedicated people. We need to ensure that the record shows that there is no ambiguity in the interpretation of the remarks which Mrs Dunne and the Liberals have made today. They believe it appropriate to describe the atmosphere and the people who create that atmosphere—the people who work and give their all through the Canberra Hospital to the people of Canberra—as a toxic workforce that has produced a toxic environment and that it is a hospital that does not deserve the respect or the support of the Liberal Party.
It is perhaps the most unfortunate, unforgivable, vicious and vitriolic attack imaginable on an outstanding organisation and an outstanding group of people that a political party, in my experience, has ever made. The Liberal Party will now live with their description that the Canberra Hospital, the services that it delivers and the people who deliver them, is toxic—a toxic organisation, staffed by toxic people, delivering—in the view of Vicki Dunne—a toxic, substandard, dangerous service.
You need to understand the damage that you do through these sorts of attacks. You need to understand the extent to which you are being manipulated by forces in the
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