Page 2810 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 16 August 2017

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video


conversation. We are looking at ways to make sure that individuals within our communities get the chance to have a say and get to have a say in a way that suits them, not so much just responding to a question on an internet site.

We are going out to shopping centres to make sure that individuals have the chance to have a conversation about how we build affordable housing and a housing strategy for Canberra for the next decade and into the future. It is not a government that is relying just on the internet or on social media to get a response; it is a government that is going out and talking with individuals and groups to make sure that we properly have feedback from all of those organisations and individuals in all of the work that is occurring in these places.

I want to touch on the comments that have been made about the government stealing and taking community facilities away from existing communities. I make this point: what the government is asking is for these communities to share a small piece of their open space so that we can build public housing that best suits the needs of our tenants and that gives our tenants, some of the poorest people in our city, the best chance at a decent life. Instead of running around demonising and creating fear and division across suburbs, across this city, between poor people and others, the Canberra Liberals could take the chance to build strong communities that care about supporting poor people in our community so that they can have the same kinds of chances that they do.

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.09): I warmly welcome Ms Lawder’s very apposite motion and the examples she provided in the motion to prove how important it is that we look at the good governance of this territory and highlight the bad governance that has come under the tutelage of this Labor Party and this Chief Minister. I would like to reflect for a little while on a couple of other examples.

It is clear that matters emerging in the health directorate show a culture of neglect that has gone on for many years. Previous health ministers talked about the 10-year war in obstetrics and shrugged their shoulders and said that warring and bullying in the health system was something that we just had to take for granted. We have lots of processes, but even to this very day we see reports of how bullying in the health system, not just in the ACT health system but across the country, is endemic. I think we have a very complacent view on that. When we put people on the front line and demand so much of them, not to protect them from bullying and not to take this seriously is an important matter. It goes to our integrity as administrators if we do not look after these issues.

The other issues that have plagued the health system, of course, have been the integrity of hospital data, which is a saga that has gone on since about 2009. It was highlighted in 2012 when deliberate data doctoring it came to light. We know that some people were punished for that, but we also know from the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that there was more than one person involved. We have never managed to highlight who the other people were.


Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video