Page 2098 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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control centre manages and coordinates ACT’s Health’s response, bringing together experts in emergency management, public health, planning and logistics, including first-response contact tracing and worst-case scenario preparedness. The clinical health emergency control centre coordinates the territory’s clinical response—the first time that our public and private hospitals and stakeholders have come together in this way, preparing the system as a whole to meet any surge in COVID-19 cases.
I pay tribute at this point to Bernadette McDonald, the CEO of Canberra Health Services, who has also operated as the clinical health controller for the COVID-19 response. I think that it is disappointing that a lot of the criticism that Mrs Dunne has made—and she blames the government and ministers for everything—is actually administrative criticism. She is thanking health workers on one hand but she is criticising our health leaders on the other. She is criticising our health leaders at a time when they are doing everything that they can to keep their workers safe, to ensure that they are well supported and to keep our community safe and protected from COVID-19.
Ms Lawder: You are blaming them.
Mrs Dunne: Yes, because this is the system—
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: No, you are blaming them. The public information coordination centre, of course, has also been delivering the most significant coordinated communications they have ever undertaken across the ACT public service, covering the health, social and economic impacts of the pandemic and ensuring that the ACT community, including priority and minority groups, always has access to the latest COVID-19 information.
I extend my gratitude and my thanks to everyone who has cared for and continues to care for Canberrans: our doctors, nurses, all our frontline workers and clinicians who have gone above and beyond during this challenging time. I also thank and acknowledge the many staff who have been redeployed from their usual positions to provide much-needed clinical and administrative systems to support our ongoing response to the pandemic.
We can be proud as a community of all our ACT public health staff who are ensuring that our territory continues to provide exceptional healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, pathology staff who have been working incredibly hard, and administrative support workers—they have all worked tirelessly to keep the Canberra community safe during this difficult time. They have adapted swiftly to offer new models of care; and we will continue to support them, as we always do as a Labor government, ensuring that their rights are upheld and that they are paid fairly and appropriately. We will continue to do that because we are Labor.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong—Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Minister for Corrections and Justice Health, Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety and Minister for Mental Health) (3.23), by leave: I move the following amendments together:
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