Page 3132 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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She was not alone. When we asked the Auditor-General about this the Auditor-General told us there were many other staff that felt the same way. If the Chief Minister is not responsible for the political imperative that led to this and the Chief Minister is not responsible for the culture of fear in the Canberra Hospital, who is? I ask that question because we have not heard an answer to that.
Mr Hargreaves: You are.
MR HANSON: Mr Hargreaves yells out, “You are.” This is the sort of smear that we are getting. After six years as minister what we are hearing from Katy Gallagher and John Hargreaves is that this is someone else’s fault.
The next element to this was the Chief Minister and her relationship to the individual at the heart of this. There are relationships in this town between people; it is a small town. But the error, the gross failure in judgement, made by Katy Gallagher was not to declare that interest but to hide behind her family member, when it was Katy Gallagher who had the relationship. Katy Gallagher, in the same year that the director of critical care started fabricating the records, had an extended holiday in the south of France with that individual. Why did she not say that? It is extraordinary. It shows a gross lack of judgement and it shows a willingness to deceive the community.
There is no allegation being made, as much as Katy Gallagher or the Greens would like to assert, but why did she deceive the community? Why was she not up-front? What a gross lack of judgement. To say “I have never, ever hidden the nature of the relationship” on 5 July after everything had come out is just an extraordinary statement to have been made by the Chief Minister. I commend this motion to members. I call for your support. To not do so will be to let down the community and patients will be lost in the system. (Time expired)
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (11.13): There are two things that have been said by the Canberra Liberals in the debate so far that I find I can agree with. One is that a motion of no confidence is the most significant motion that can be brought before this place—and what we have heard from the Canberra Liberals to date gives no justification whatsoever for the bringing on of this motion. They have failed in more than half an hour of contribution to mount any substantive case. The other observation that I could make is that Mr Seselja spoke of an inner circle of cronies—and he would be very familiar with that concept; he surrounds himself with such a circle.
What we are witnessing this morning from the opposition is gutter politics of the worst kind. The Leader of the Opposition is demeaning the Assembly with this shallow and pathetic stunt. It is nothing more than a desperate attempt to cover up his party’s own policy failings. Instead of engaging in a substantive debate about vision, about alternative policies, about the future of the city of Canberra—instead of debating how we could keep our economy and our community strong; instead of doing any of these things—the opposition has again resorted to a cheap, shallow political stunt. It is clear that the Canberra Liberals stand for nothing. They stand for
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