Page 3678 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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“Our analysis from Treasury has withstood all the scrutiny.” It did not. Sinclair Davidson said, “This is a concoction.”
Ms Gallagher: No-one has found a mistake with the Treasury minutes.
MR SMYTH: Nobody found a mistake. Oh, it shifts and it changes.
Ms Gallagher: No, it does not.
MR SMYTH: No-one found a mistake. Yes; the numbers added up. But what they said was that it was not worth doing that way. Four eminent individuals from different fields, from different backgrounds, all said that this is not the way to do it. And it fell over. Why? Because the Treasurer did not do her work properly. Why? Because the health minister was not looking for health outcomes; she was simply looking at an accounting treatment to protect her bottom line.
The inconsistency continues. In the end, the Little Company of Mary pulled out. Yes, there have been proposed changes in the accounting standards. That has given the Treasurer cum health minister another opportunity to change her story. But at the end of the day, from the very start, Mr Hanson, on behalf of the Canberra Liberals, said, and is now proved right, that there was no need and no case to spend the $77 million on the purchase of Calvary hospital. That is true. That is irrefutable.
Mr Hanson said that from the start—well, not quite from the start. We looked at it; we made a decision; and then we said we found no case for the justification of the spending of this money. It is unfortunate—you can see it today in the four options, as Mr Hanson has pointed out—that a number of those options do not seem to be reliant on the new accounting standards. It is quite interesting that some of those options are now there on the table. These are options that could have been on the table before, but they were not stated, because it was the minister’s intention to get the hospital back come what may.
That is why we are here today. Again, the Treasurer is forced to come in here and explain why this has been such a debacle—why, over the last two years, it has distracted Treasury officials and health officials from doing their jobs, because she did not get it right in the first place.
Now we see that there is not only one set of advice but a second set of advice. Another group was employed to look at what PricewaterhouseCoopers had done. But nobody is going to see either set of advice, because the more honest, more open, more accountable Stanhope-Gallagher government will not release the information. It is not unreasonable information. It is commercial in confidence? The deal is off—there is no deal—so I am not sure what we are protecting here. And the Assembly has the right to ask for this advice. It is the government’s advice. The government can choose whether or not it releases that advice. What we have got is a government that yet again hides behind commercial in confidence even though—
Ms Gallagher: We have got nothing to hide.
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