Page 931 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
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The minister repeated those words earlier this week. The problem is that this should not have been a revelation to the minister for health. There has been two years of effort by the Canberra Liberals to put Meegan Fitzharris in the picture about what was going on. We have worked hard to bring these issues to her attention. I have brought forward several motions and many stories about broken lives and even suicides and attempted suicides. There have been serious calls for a board of inquiry. There have been damning staff surveys after damning staff surveys, most of which have been covered up.
This minister and this Labor coalition were dragged kicking and screaming via two calls for a board of inquiry to an independent review, a review which they hoped would just cover things up and it would be left in the bottom drawer. But much to their surprise this independent review has revealed exactly what the Canberra Liberals and members of the medical community and the Canberra Times and other media outlets have been saying: it finally revealed and affirmed the truth about the state of the culture in the ACT health system.
It has taken an independent review that affirmed the truth for this minister to admit—because she knew all along—that there was a problem in the public health system. As recently as Tuesday this week Minister Fitzharris again admitted that the report was difficult reading. This statement alone is a last-ditch effort to try to downplay the seriousness of what has emerged through this inquiry.
Even her statement that she was sorry that staff had to endure bullying, harassment and intimidation is little more than lip-service. It is the sort of thing you have to say when you are publicly exposed as being a negligent and neglectful employer. I am sorry, too, for those people and their families who had to wait in some cases years for a minister in this government to acknowledge there is a problem with the workplace culture in ACT Health.
Perhaps Minister Fitzharris needs a little more convincing. One former ACT Health worker who read the report has remarked that it was traumatising to relive once again the issues she experienced in Health. Indeed reading the Reid report made her feel physically ill. Perhaps Minister Fitzharris needs to hear a few comments from the staff that were quoted in the report? For instance:
At ACT Health, we feel there is nowhere to go, no one who will listen, no one who will stand up for us …
That has certainly been the case expounded by Ms Fitzharris.
One staff member commented:
The endless emotional abuse and mind games by management has resulted in many staff members feeling like the only way anything will change is if they find work elsewhere … Many feel that making a formal complaint would only make matters worse, for fear of later being the target of poorer treatment.
The zero tolerance and safe respectful pathways that Minister Fitzharris as well as Mr Rattenbury have been espousing are cynical and patronising at best and downright
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