Page 1079 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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For mental health clients, there is a small reduction in the 28-day unplanned re-admission rate. But of real concern is that the proportion of clients that are discharged with completed outcome assessments has dropped 12 per cent since last year, and this seems to be a trend.
So it is quite clear if you look at the report, and I acknowledge the good points in the report, that there are some really bad outcomes as well. For the minister to come up with her findings and to say that access to care is improving, and not to raise a single negative outcome in either her press release or in her foreword to the report, is fraud. She understands her portfolio very well. She has been the minister for five years, so this is not an accident. She did not put out that press release and then say: “Oh, I forgot to mention elective surgery. I forgot to mention emergency departments.” She knows what she is doing, and what she is doing is deliberately trying to present a far more flattering view of the health system, the public health system as is reported in that quarterly report, than is the reality.
There is no other way to read that. There is no other interpretation. What we have got here is the reality that, if it were not for the opposition in this place publicly explaining to the public and explaining to members that there is a problem and that the gloss that the minister is putting on it is not the truth, we would never know. Is that appropriate? I do not think it is. I do not think it is appropriate for the minister to continually mislead the public in the manner that she is doing and I think that the public expect government ministers to present a true picture of the state of the health system, not a false view—and that is what the case is.
Mr Stanhope: It’s in the report, isn’t it?
MR HANSON: The report is presented by ACT Health, Chief Minister. The foreword is presented by the minister. ACT Health have done their job very diligently and I commend the staff and I commend the executive. What I have a problem with is the minister’s foreword and the press release that have twisted the report and have changed the statistics in that report. That is clearly what has happened and we are at a point now where quite clearly the minister cannot be trusted by the public. She is not being truthful about the state of the public health system. She is twisting the statistics.
We know this is a minister who deliberately covered up the bullying review into Canberra Hospital and this is also the minister—and this is extraordinary in question time—who said, “I will never, ever tell a lie.” Then, when I asked her a question, she said in this Assembly, and she continues to say in this Assembly, and I will say it again:
Talk about rewriting history! I was not attempting to have rushed through a heads of agreement. LCM at the time requested that a heads of agreement be signed so that discussions could continue …
But the letter that she wrote to the Little Company of Mary before the election quite clearly says something different. She lays out the whole proposal—purchasing the hospital and selling off Clare Holland House—and says:
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