MEDICUS FEBRUARY 2016

F R O M T H E E D I T O R

Secret squirrel business and nutty outcomes

G overnment secrecy can act like a cancer on democracy, eating away public confidence in our system of government, at the same time reducing our support for the government of the day. People rarely want to know everything about every particular project or issue – but what they really don’t appreciate is a refusal by government to tell them anything. They are also suspicious when it seems clear to them that the media is being misled. The old adage – what does the government have to hide? – is especially galling as it involves public money, or in other words, money supplied by taxpayers to run the state or the country. With Freedom of Information legislation becoming more a case of Freedom FROM Information, it is getting harder for members of the public and the media to discover what is actually happening with our money. A recent front page of The West Australian newspaper carried a story about the lack of transparency of a government report. Every word and every dollar amount was blanked out by some public servant before it was released to the newspaper. Later the same day however, the full report, untouched by anyone’s pen, was leaked to the ABC and reported on the national broadcaster’s multiple platforms.

The government didn’t fall, the state is unlikely to have been financially embarrassed and the sun rose the next morning. In another case, highlighted once again by our major morning newspaper, Energy Minister Mike Nahan refused to disclose arrangements of an agreement with a mining operator. Sure enough, full details of the agreement were released in the company’s annual report. The Australian Defence Force rejected a suggestion last month that the public should know what aircraft had been purchased from the US Airforce, citing the too often used “security concerns”. Again, the US Armed Forces revealed the information in their usual – and open – report to the US Congress. Without the bloody-minded decision to hide run-of-the-mill information, none of this would be news. The refusal of information, often just because it CAN be refused by a nameless departmental officer, is the news, and is the base of so much public and media frustration. Secrecy is a negative for public debate and confidence in our system of government. Even more importantly, it promotes cynicism and even deters people from turning up at the polls each election.

have seen not just obfuscation about the number or impact of spending cuts on care in WA, but have faced a barrage of misinformation and secrecy. From original denials about any job cuts in health, to a mixed message of either 200 or 250 voluntary redundancies to the final admission from the Health Minister that there would be 1,100 FTE axed positions, we have seen it all. To make a small alteration to a well- known movie line, in this case “we can handle the truth”. It is interesting to note that the AMA (WA) was once again right about the number of job cuts, despite repeated denials from the government and an effort to “attack the messenger”. So what did the government get from this? And what about some sectors of the media who were too willing to accept the government’s misinformation? The AMA is willing to admit that there are efficiencies which could be made and spending that could be saved. Cutting positions without careful consideration of the likely impact of such decisions only adds to this suspicion and fear. Morale of the wider medical profession suffers and public confidence in the health system is reduced, almost like dominos falling. And we are ALL the weaker for it as a result. ■

I raise these concerns because in the health arena over recent months, we

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Dr Michael Gannon Australia’s Private Health Industry has caught a cold

continually lift the quality of the public system which will maintain an equal or near equal standard of care, because of the instruments of our democracy which include letters to newspaper

editors, talk-back radio and chewing the ears of Members of Parliament. The current system of private medicine has caught a cold. I can only hope that the mutuals behave better than the

for-profits. If the private system fails patients, we potentially lose our unique mix, and diminish access to the public hospital system for the neediest. We all have to be part of the solution. ■

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