Page 752 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 March 2019
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service is unhappy. She did admit that the safe ways that she said were there had not previously actually been there and that this was a failure of governance. She said that it was disappointing. It is more than disappointing. It is negligent on the part of this minister and her predecessors. It is negligent on the part of this minister and her predecessors to have treated ACT Health staff so badly over such a long time.
I will not resile from my support for ACT Health staff or from demanding that they have a bullying-free workplace and a cultural environment which allows them to thrive, to flourish and to provide good service to the ACT community, because it is quite clear and is specifically stated in the final report that there is a clear correlation between poor culture and poor treatment of patients. Until we fix the culture, we will not be able to provide the best possible patient care for the people of the ACT. That is what ACT taxpayers pay for. They pay top dollar for a health system which delivers on good health care. It can only deliver on good health care when it has a happy working environment.
Mr Reid and his reviewers showed that there was not a happy working environment; and not that it was just a little unhappy but that it was significantly, and statistically significantly, more unhappy, a worse place to work, than other comparable health systems. Compared to New South Wales, people in the ACT health system are unhappier about their workplace and less proud of their workplace. And that is not right. Health workers should be able to be proud of the place in which they work, because they provide such a fundamental service to the people in their community. When they cannot be proud of their community because of the way they are treated and the way they have been ground down by successive Labor ministers, there is something seriously wrong.
It is not over. It is not better. Tabling the report and agreeing to the recommendations does not make it better. It is a stepping stone towards making it better. It will take years, as Mr Reid has told us, to make it better. I am a little uncertain as to whether the minister should be overseeing the cultural improvement committee. I think there are arguments for and against that. The fact that she is means that we will be holding her accountable. We will be looking at the annual reports of this cultural improvement process. We will be ensuring that the measures that are reported on are real and measurable and that over time we do see an improvement in the culture of the ACT health system, as widely defined. There is much that needs to be done.
This review is welcome. It shows how misguided and misleading to the ACT community the minister has been. She persistently said that there was not a problem. This report definitively shows that there is a problem. This minister is now principally responsible for the solution. She has to lift her game fairly significantly, because she has not been a great performer in terms of delivery on policy and delivery on initiatives, not just in the health portfolio but across her portfolios. She has to seriously lift her game for the benefit of the workers in the ACT health system and the wider benefit of the ACT community.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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