Page 2102 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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MRS DUNNE: It is called wage theft, as Ms Lawder said. This has been perpetrated by the ACT government with the support of the Greens. Anything short of an audit of the current pay system to see who has not been paid correctly and who has been paid correctly, whether they have been underpaid or overpaid, is a dereliction of this minister’s duty to the people that she and Mr Rattenbury say they have an ongoing commitment of fairness to. This is laughable. It is very interesting when you look at it. Minister Stephen-Smith’s first response to my motion was to seek to omit paragraphs (2) and (4), which are the operative ones that call for them to say something other than just nice words.
Ms Stephen-Smith: Just go back to what you put in on Monday, only three days ago. It was what you wanted.
Mr Rattenbury interjecting—
Mr Hanson: That was a snide little comment.
MRS DUNNE: Yes, that is right. Madam Assistant Speaker, as a member of this place, I am entitled, under the standing orders, to amend my own motion. I am entitled, under the standing orders, to amend my own motion, and that is what I did yesterday morning. As a member, I have an entitlement and I exercised it—in the same way that junior doctors have an entitlement to be paid fairly and on the due date. They should not have to chase their overtime week in and week out. They should not have their partners say to me, almost in tears, “She shouldn’t have to put up with that.” She should not, after working for 90 hours in the ACT health system, have to chase her wages.
You should not have to look in people’s eyes and see the pain that they feel for their partners. That is the entitlement that I am talking about, Mr Rattenbury, and just as is the case on most other occasions, you overreach. You do not understand; you have no empathy. You do not understand what is happening to these doctors. They work for 90 hours a week. They do it week in and week out. The minister says that it is bad for them. They know that it is bad for them. They are sitting there and telling Mr Coe and I just how bad it is for them, and how they fear for patients’ safety; then these people cannot even pay them properly.
When you explore this, you see what doctors are being told. This is what they were told on 11 August: “There is a process in place, the Canberra Hospital has been scoping out a new digital platform and are sourcing a task force to smoothly transition towards a goal. This will take one to two years to come to fruition.” But at least change is on the way; these are positive people. “At this stage it looks like we will be moving to the Epic software, which has already been rolled out to the Royal Children’s Hospital and to the expanded Royal Melbourne Hospital, in financial year 2022-23.”
The current doctors do not have a system that helps them to get paid fairly. The previous doctors and two more generations of junior doctors—the ones who are employed next year and the year after—will not have this system. All that these doctors want is an audit of the system. As employers, ACT taxpayers have a responsibility. We act on behalf of ACT taxpayers; we take on that responsibility.
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