Page 4397 - Week 10 - Thursday, 23 September 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
election, the minister should have said: “This is what we want to do. There are a number of options. Let’s have a look at these. Let’s have a debate about these.” It would have been a far better process to follow. She was negligently wrong. Mr Stanhope said back in 2001:
We will try not to make mistakes, and if we do, we will be open about them.
When I read Ms Gallagher’s tabling statement that she made in the Assembly about where the government is at, I do not see any acknowledgement of any mistakes having been made. Rather, I just see spin and excuses.
In terms of the current situation—members may have seen yesterday’s Canberra Times—the position seems to be quite poisonous between the government and the Little Company of Mary. I question who leaked the letters. The government might want to say that it was them, I do not know, but it certainly indicates either a loss of faith from the Little Company of Mary or a breach of trust from the government. The newspaper stated:
The operators of Calvary Hospital have threatened to hit territory taxpayers with bills worth tens of millions of dollars in the wake of the collapse of a $77 million for the ACT Government to buy Calvary.
Letters between Catholic healthcare outfit Little Company of Mary and Health Minister Katy Gallagher, released yesterday to The Canberra Times, reveal how fraught behind-the-scenes negotiations have become between the two sides.
Calvary and the Government are at loggerheads over the future of health care in Canberra’s north. … the parties cannot even agree on key elements of the agreement already in place to run the hospital. …
The letters indicate that there is little common ground with Ms Gallagher’s letter mentioning several “concerns”.
“The most significant concern is the position put by the [Little Company] Board that the ACT Government owes Calvary Health Care in excess of $14 million in accrued liabilities in relation to long service leave and annual leave entitlements …
The article went on to say:
But the most recent letter of Little Company of Mary Health Care chairman Tom Brennan to Ms Gallagher, sent last month, outlines a long list of disagreements between the two parties and warns that any attempt by the Government to go it alone and build a new hospital in the northern suburbs could be met with legal action.
As you can see, we have come to a point, after two years of what can only be described as an appallingly handled process, where the acrimony and the falling out between the two sides has reached such a point that I think we as an Assembly need to intervene and become involved in the ongoing debate.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video