Page 1528 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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data review. The review has been completed and I look forward to speaking further to this later this week. As I have indicated previously, I commissioned this review and as part of it wanted to ensure clinicians helped stakeholders and the Canberra community have access to meaningful data.
Following a final round of consultation with staff, which begins very soon, the final report will be tabled and public consultation will commence in the second half of this year. I look forward to the ACT leading the country on the provision of data to the ACT community. We have been looking closely at what South Australia do, in particular, and hope to learn from their good work.
Of course, allegations of bullying within any workplace and certainly in ACT Health worry me greatly. As minister, I am committed to ensuring ACT Health and our public health services have a respectful, supportive and inclusive approach that values all employees and ensures there are avenues for staff to be able to raise issues when they arise. As a major employer with over 7,000 employees ACT Health has a zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. Let me be clear: there is no place for bullying and harassment or any other form of inappropriate behaviour in our hospitals and health facilities.
ACT Health takes allegations seriously and actively works to prevent and manage any behaviours in the workplace that are inappropriate. This includes fostering a culture of reporting and making sure we have well-established supports in place to respond to staff when concerns are raised and working with staff, managers, staff representatives, medical colleges and tertiary institutions to ensure these important issues are tackled head-on.
Of course, healthy workplace cultures are everyone’s responsibility and I have asked the interim director-general to have this at the forefront of his discussions with staff and to demonstrate this with senior staff and clinical leaders in the organisation and to lead by example. And I am confident that this will be a feature of the new organisations.
On the issue of prescription monitoring that is raised in the motion, I am pleased to say that this will be introduced on Thursday, as stated in the last sitting period. This delay was to allow the government to ensure the legislation was up to date and effective and to determine if a national scheme was imminent, given that on the Friday after the last sitting week we had a meeting of health ministers to discuss this very issue.
I am pleased to say that the ACT is actually leading the country, along with Tasmania, on this issue and we are moving much faster than many jurisdictions. I would request the opposition, if they are really concerned with action on this issue, to work closely with the federal government about getting a national scheme up and running as soon as possible. But I do look forward to introducing this legislation later in the week. It is important legislation.
On the opioid guidelines issue, it was the case that this review had languished for too long. As soon as I was made aware of the issue I asked ACT Health to bring forward
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