Page 5690 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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MR SPEAKER: Preamble, Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES:—saves lives, including my own, would the minister please tell us what feedback she has received from the Canberra community on the performance of the emergency department?
Mr Seselja: Only the good stuff.
MS GALLAGHER: No, it is not only the good stuff, thank you, Mr Seselja. I get a range of feedback from people who have used the emergency department. Some of it will be concerns around the wait involved. Some of it will be around not seeing a doctor, maybe seeing the physio. Some will be around the system of triaging and admin that operates there.
Yes, I do also get compliments because it is a first-rate public health system and people who are treated at the emergency department get access to an excellent standard of care. Yes, I get a range of feedback. I think the hospital has worked very hard, from the executive director level down, to make sure that where feedback is provided, patients and their families who have used the emergency department are provided with an adequate response, even if that response is: we had 190 people present on that day. We had two car accidents. We had someone flown in from the coast on SouthCare and yes, that did impact on the timeliness with which you were seen. But I would believe that most people, including everybody in this place, would understand that those who are in most urgent need are treated first in an emergency department setting.
Superannuation funds—ethical investments
MS HUNTER: My question is to the Treasurer and concerns the way the territory is voting in shareholder resolutions. Minister, you recently answered a question I asked on notice about the way the territory voted on a number of resolutions put by shareholders at annual general meetings. In that answer you indicated that the territory had voted against a resolution put to ExxonMobil to amend its written equal employment opportunity policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Minister, why did the territory exercise its right as a shareholder in this way?
MR BARR: I thank Ms Hunter for the most predictable question of question time this week, with the forewarning of issuing a press release on this topic. I note Ms Hunter’s concern in relation to these matters. I am advised that there are many thousands of these sorts of resolutions that are put before shareholders across the world each year. So it is simply not possible for me as Treasurer to be able to issue voting advice on every single resolution that is possibly moved by shareholder activists across every single company in the world that from time to time the ACT government, through its superannuation portfolio, may have investments in.
With this particular vote, had I had the opportunity to exercise a personal influence, there is a question here, of course, that goes to the heart of the Assembly committee
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