HEARINGS EXPOSE SPRINGBORG MYTHS

Media Release

Shadow Health Minister, Jo-Ann Miller, says today’s Budget Estimates hearings had exploded the multitude of myths Health Minister Lawrence Springborg has been peddling about the Queensland Health payroll.

“The admissions the Opposition was able to secure from the Minister and his Director-General, Dr Tony O’Connell, show Mr Springborg has been deliberately scaremongering about a ‘$1.25 billion’ cost to fix the payroll system when no such figure exists,” Mrs Miller said.

“The answers given today also show Mr Springborg is focussed on playing politics and not on fixing the payroll system and helping Queensland Health staff already under pressure from his government’s mass sackings and savage cuts to frontline services.”

Mrs Miller said today’s Budget Estimates hearings had revealed:

•  Mr Springborg’ s own Director-General had explained the “$1.25 billion” cost over eight years to fix the payroll repeatedly claimed by Mr Springborg consisted largely of operating costs. 
•  Dr O’Connell had been D-G and Deputy Director-General under the former government and for a period had been a member of the executive team overseeing the payroll project. 
•  The Director-General had admitted the KPMG report used by Mr Springborg was an analysis not an audit. 
•  Mr Springborg had rejected an offer by payroll technology provider IBM to meet with company representatives. 
•  In the past 79 days and after having access to the former government’s legal advice he claimed he needed to see urgently, Mr Springborg had made no effort to view the advice with the Crown Solicitor who could provide him with further advice. 
•  Mr Springborg knew what the advice contained because his Director-General had stated at the hearing he had paraphrased it for the Minister. 
•  Mr Springborg had also made no effort to seek fresh advice, preferring to wrongly claim he could not access the previous advice written in mid-2010. 
•  Mr Springborg had misquoted a letter from the Queensland Council of Unions about the payroll issue, omitting the QCU’s statements that their efforts to warn the former government had been blocked by departmental bureaucrats.

“All we saw and heard from Mr Springborg today were more misleading claims, more myths and a series of badly choreographed stunts that backfired,” Mrs Miller said.