Premier Bligh Asked to Reconsider Decision on Queensland Health
Dumping the current organizational make up Queensland Health was too drastic a move that Premier Anna Bligh has resorted to just because one person committed grave mistakes.
This according to Katter's Australian Party representative Aidan McLindon, who stressed that the state government handed down a significant policy decision that was solely based on 'reactions' and minus the benefit of any thoughtful considerations.
Bligh, following the arrest of Queensland Health finance manager Joel Barlow, had decided to devolve the functions of the problem-wracked state department into two separate entities, with the state maintaining administrative supervision of its replacement.
Barlow has been accused of plundering $11 million from the coffers of Queensland Health, which investigators said he used to finance a lifestyle far-exceeding that of his regular income.
The suspect, police said, keeps a luxury home and a number of expensive cars and even passed himself as a Tahitian royalty.
However, McLindon said that while he appreciates Bligh's efforts to rectify the ills seen in Queensland's health services, splitting its office, he contends, may not be the necessary answer at this time.
And that move, he added, may in the end prove more costly for Queensland taxpayers.
"You can hardly blame the Government 100 per cent, but where the Government have failed is being reactionary, by starting to rebrand and split the department, which is going to come at a cost of tens of millions of dollars," McLindon was reported by ABC as saying.
It would be more for prudent for Bligh, McLindon stressed, to review all the facts surrounding the problems of Queensland Health, before finally implementing a solution that hopefully would prevent another unfortunate incident to mar the department's operations.
He pointed out that "wasting tens of millions of dollars on rebranding something ... actually doesn't fix the problem."
A good start for the Queensland government, observers said, is to reorient its health workers, whose morale took a beating on the series of scandals that have hampered Queensland Health's operations.
Leaders of the Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) have admitted that overall sentiments on what had happened practically quashed their collective morale.
"It has been a very difficult couple of years in on the back of the payroll disaster and then we have had natural disasters earlier this year," QNU secretary Beth Mohle told ABC.
Like any other employees, Mohle said that Queensland Health workers yearned to reclaim the moment when they "be proud of where they go to work and not actually have it the subject of constant media attention and negative comment."