Page 5709 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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clearly the minister is quoting from a document. Mr Smyth has asked under the standing orders for her to table that document and she is refusing to do so but offering up another document. That is not good enough because what we want is the document that the minister was speaking from. If that is an entirely innocuous, superfluous or irrelevant document that you were not actually quoting from, why have you resisted tabling it? If all it has is triangles, doodles and flowers on it, what is wrong with tabling that?
The point is, minister, that you spend your time repeatedly talking about open and accountable government. But when it comes to a simple test like this where all you are going to be providing us is something that you have said has got nothing on it other than triangles, doodles and flowers, you are refusing to do so and you are offering up something else. This is the point: when it comes to these statistics, what happened last week is that the AIHW put out a report that showed that the ACT has the worst results for elective surgery and emergency departments in the country. And within hours there was a report put out by the government that showed some other statistics and Katy Gallagher said, “No, this is what is happening now.”
So we have been through that document—and that caused a lot of confusion in the media—and that report is the subject of the questions that we have asked here in the Assembly. And now we are asking questions about that report she is again saying: Oh, no, no, that’s not the latest. There is something else; there is another report and it is all much better.” So she is in the Assembly today saying, “Calvary is doing a lot better.” But the report that she tabled just last week shows there has been a 19 per cent deterioration since this time last year. So what we are finding is that we are constantly chasing our tails because whenever we come up with a report, be it from the AIHW or a report that is tabled by the minister herself, there is always another report—“But you can’t see that one,” or, “We’re going to release it at the tenth hour or the eleventh hour.”
The point is that if the minister is serious about open and accountable government this is a very simple test: in accordance with standing orders, you quoted from a document saying that these new figures are great, and if they are so great simply table it. It is not a very difficult thing to do.
Ms Gallagher: I am trying to.
MR HANSON: No, you are not. This is the point, Mr Speaker, on the interjection: there are two documents here. There is a table that provides a figure and a document from which Ms Gallagher was quoting. They are two separate documents; otherwise she would not have been refusing to table that document and be furiously, as we have been speaking, doodling on it, drawing triangles, flowers and other things, to make it appear like it is some sort of note. Clearly there is some information there that she is resistant to table. Why won’t she? That is the question. We ask her to, in the spirit of open and accountable government.
Question put:
That Mr Smyth’s motion be agreed to.
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