DEEPENING CRISIS

THE crisis surrounding Tasmania’s Health Minister and the public health system is deepening with Michael Ferguson now accused of misleading an Upper House committee.

For the third straight day, Mr Ferguson yesterday faced questions over his continued denial of the existence of a confidential Deloitte report into the Tasmanian Health Service, which slams the Tasmanian Health Service executive and recommends a long list of improvements.

Now Independent Murchison MLC Ruth Forrest has questioned whether Mr Ferguson mislead the Legislative Council’s committee into Acute Health Services in the state during a meeting on December 12.

Ms Forrest says that during that meeting of the committee, which will release an interim report of its own findings before Christmas, Mr Ferguson said there was no report.

“How can you prepare a summary report without having a report to summarise,” Ms Forrest said.

“I don’t know if he is being directly dishonest but it is certainly misleading,” she said.

In an exclusive interview with the Mercury yesterday, Mr Ferguson said there was no report, only a survey by Deloit- te which was transferred into a summary report and those accusing him of misleading State Parliament or the inquiry into acute health service needed evidence to back it up.

“I asked for the [summary] report to be written so we could provide the public with a summary, not just the work of Deloitte but also the progress of the opening of the extra beds,” he said.

“I can appreciate that people may have thought there is a report. I can respect that.

“[But there is] no advantage in me making up a statement that is not true, I gave an answer on ABC radio [where he first asked about it] and when I got back to the office I received further advice and I took active steps to inform the public that there was not a report at the point in time.

“That’s the record, if anyone doubts that they need to have evidence to the contrary.”

At the hearing earlier this month, Mr Ferguson said while he had received a briefing from Deloitte on their work, there was no report.

“I am happy to tell you that I have received a briefing by way of a presentation from Deloitte very recently as part of a Cabinet subcommittee meeting,” he is quoted on Hansard as saying.

“Noting that this work does relate to a Cabinet process, there are longstanding conventions in place. While I stand by my statements on this matter to those who would prefer to believe otherwise that there is no report.

“I have asked the new bed implementation team to prepare a summary for public release, including progress on the opening of the 120 additional beds and treatment recliners, as well as key findings from the work undertaken by Deloitte.”

Labor leader Rebecca White said it was time Mr Ferguson admitted his misled the public over the existence of the report — quoting a section of the document that went out to staff about Deloitte’s work that said “all individual responses and data collected as part of this survey will be retained by Deloitte and aggregated into a report”.

“His Government’s document confirms there is an official report. Michael Ferguson needs to stop digging and admit he misled Parliament. This is beyond farcical now,” she said.

Greens health spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff said “it’s difficult to believe anything that Minister Ferguson is saying at the moment”.

Chair of the committee, Hobart MLC Rob Valentine said he didn’t want to pre-empt the findings of the Legislative Council inquiry but said he would like Mr Ferguson to provide them with as much information as possible.

“Whatever the state is: whatever the Minister claims; we need the fullest information to be available to us,” he said.

“Maybe he needs to make the terms of reference, the survey and the findings available.”

Mr Valentine said if the information was not forthcoming the committee might be able to subpoena the documents, but he hoped Mr Ferguson “would provide the fullest amount of detail possible”.

Committee member and Rosevers MLC Kerry Finch said he was surprised a report had been released on Saturday.

“I think he [Mr Ferguson] is pretty earnest, I don’t think he would purposely mislead the committee,” he said.

“I think he has probably needed to think on our request, I think there was no point in Michael Ferguson concealing any evidence from us.”