Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-22 Daily Xml

Contents

Integrity Care

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:03): Supplementary arising from the original answer: can the minister outline, if possible, the number of occasions and the dates that the minister has made formal representations to her national colleagues or any national bodies regarding the concerns she claims to have about Integrity Care?

The PRESIDENT: Minister, I can't recall you talking about—

An honourable member: Integrity Care?

The PRESIDENT: Well, Integrity Care but the national—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:03): I will answer it. Mr President, I will put everyone out of their misery.

The PRESIDENT: Minister, thanks for your assistance; I appreciate it.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: The Department of Human Services has had numerous contacts with SAPOL, the Quality and Safeguards Commission, and I have had numerous conversations with the federal minister. I have had a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting or whatever it is with the Quality and Safeguards Commission. There have been a number of occasions when there have been matters which are concerns raised, conversations, passing of information. That would be a very large task to try to compile all that, and I think it would be an unnecessary diversion, particularly for the department to try to identify every single conversation.

I mean, does he really expect us to go through every telephone record, from my phone, from my chief of staff's phone, from my advisers, from people in the department and the number of hours where they may have been on a particular line of investigation? Indeed, that may well even prejudice the inquiry because some of these matters go directly to the issues that are under police investigation and under the investigation of the Quality and Safeguards Commission.