Page 3137 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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The Chief Minister deserves the confidence of this Assembly. She deserves the confidence of this community.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.29): I always like talking after Mr Barr, because you get lots of glib words but you get no substance. And if you were the Chief Minister of the day, you would not get defence or support either. Everyone knows that Mr Barr says glib words in this place while he and his staff are out there backgrounding the press about what is really going on in the government, telling Ross Solly that things are not as good as they could be and what a good job he does.
We have it in the article by Mr Solly about the no-confidence motion where he says that “because truth be known there is unease within the party about the way Katy Gallagher has handled the data tampering scandal”. Where is that coming from? Who would benefit from undermining the Chief Minister from within the party? The man who just failed in his defence—glib lines but very little substance and very little passion about how good this Chief Minister is.
It raises the question, Madam Deputy Speaker: if, as Mr Barr so feebly asserted, all is so good, if all is so much better after the last 11 years of Labor and six years of Katy Gallagher, why is there the need to tamper with the data? Why is there the need to doctor the numbers? Because the situation has deteriorated. And it is not us that say it. On page 23 of the Auditor-General’s report on emergency department performance information it says:
… there has been variable performance against waiting time indicators, and it is apparent that there has been an overall decline in performance over the last ten years.
Let me say it again:
… it is apparent that there has been an overall decline in performance over the last ten years.
And that is when you include the doctored data. When we get the full picture, there will not be a decline; it will be an avalanche of failure that rests fairly and squarely on the shoulders of this Chief Minister. It follows the elective surgery data, where patients’ classifications were changed without any substance; the 10-year war on bullying; the GP crisis on which she had no answer until forced to do things by this Assembly; then of course the doctoring of the ED data; and this morning we see that patients are exposed to significant risk because processes are not being followed.
We have infrastructure delays—things like the car park and the women’s and children’s hospital. We have the secret sale of Calvary; apparently all the plans are on the table but we forgot about the big one that would have cost taxpayers $70 million. We see waiting lists go up. If my memory serves me right, in October 2001 the waiting list was at 3,488 and it blew out to well over 5,000. And only through the efforts of the staff has it been clawed back.
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