Page 2343 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
What concerns me is that those two terms can be used as liberally as they have—and I do not mean any pun there. I would ask Mr Hanson to withdraw both of those comments. The rest of what he has said is up to him and the minister to argue about. But I do think that it denigrates Mr Hanson’s argument to use those particular terms. It does not do him or his party any good at all and I think it would be evidence of good grace to this parliament to withdraw those particular comments.
We need to understand that there are a number of issues at play in this motion. Some of them are the actual story behind all this, but the other one is the accusation that these records have been doctored in some way. If people are going to come into this chamber and suggest that, I think it is incumbent upon them to provide proof of that. If people do not have proof, do not bring it to this chamber—go and get it first. If proof does exist, Mr Speaker, then the leave of the chamber should be sought to table that proof, because this is a very serious allegation against public servants in the ACT—and I know, from nearly 30 years of service to the ACT, that that is probably the most hurtful accusation that can be levelled against the professionalism of the public servants.
I spent nearly 20 years in health, Mr Speaker, and I can tell you that in my experience I had cause to see a lot of maladministration—a lot of it—and I worked under the commonwealth regime, Liberals’ regime and Labor’s regime, and I saw a lot of incompetence and a lot of all sorts of stuff which you would not want to boast about. What I did not see was illegality. What I did not see was doctoring of information to suit a given purpose; I did not see any of that. I saw people going about their job, doing the best that they possibly could under rather dreadful circumstances. They used to say in 1985 in the Department of Health that the only thing consistent was the rate of change—and people were working in dreadful circumstances.
I will not—I cannot—sit here and listen to the reputation of those professional people that I worked alongside be besmirched in this way. If Mr Hanson has proof of this, let him produce it and let it be dealt with by a competent authority. And, believe me, Mr Speaker, competent authority to look at this stuff does exist. Independent, competent authority does exist. But let us not have a debate in this chamber over the gossamer of accusations. Let us have an argument over facts—hard facts.
I notice that Mr Hanson was very serious, very concerned and very angry, because he said so. “Do you think I am angry? I am,” he said. And, if he feels as though that anger is justified, fine; I am not going to deny him that. But I would say: if you want to share it in this chamber, share the cause of it as well. Share the proof of it as well. Do not say of the ministry, “You can’t do this,” and then do it yourself. So I implore Mr Hanson to produce the evidence, and I for one will support an action to correct that if he can produce that information. I do not think he can—and I do not say that frivolously—because the people that I know, that I worked with for a very long time in ACT Health, are, quite frankly, just not capable of it. They are just not capable of it. They are concerned professionals. They are professional officers of the public service. In fact, most of the people that I worked with do not work at it because it is a job; they work at it because it is a vocation.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video