Parliament blog: 'Smear and innuendo': D'Ath blasts ABC
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has launched a vicious attack on the public broadcaster, claiming a story published by ABC News was “highly defamatory”.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has launched a vicious attack on the public broadcaster, claiming a story published by ABC News on Wednesday was “highly defamatory” and “based solely on smear and innuendo”.
The news report published on the ABC News website highlighted Ms D’Ath had received a gift, which she declared, of a storage unit from a prominent Redcliffe businesswoman.
The businesswoman runs a company that leased out space to Queensland Health to run a vaccination clinic.
The Courier-Mail does not suggest any wrongdoing by the health minister.
Queensland Health Director-General Shaun Drummond today defended the Health Minister in relation to the report, which he said made “certain suggestions around the appropriateness of the selection of a site of a Covid vaccination clinic”.
“As the Director-General, and as the former Health Service Chief Executive of Metro North Hospital and Health Service, I can categorically confirm that all appropriate processes were followed,” Mr Drummond said.
“Vaccination clinic sites were chosen to enable the best possible access for the community, and considered building size and layout, parking and transport options, ability to accommodate a short-term fit-out – and often, availability at short notice. Any suggestion or imputation that appropriate procurement processes were not followed is false,” he said.
Mr Drummond said such decisions were operational decisions made by officers of the Department of Health and Hospital and Health Services.
“There was no involvement by the Office of the Minister Health and Ambulances Services, or by the Minister personally. Community-based vaccination clinics were a key component in the vaccination program’s success, making the Covid-19 vaccine available to Queenslanders closer to home.”
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Her comments came after anti-coal protesters infiltrated parliament and were hauled out by police after they brandished banners and chanted “stop coal, stop gas”.
About a dozen Extinction Rebellion protestors seated in the public gallery section of parliament stood from their chairs and waved banners over the bannister chanting “stop coal, stop gas”.
Speaker Curtis Pitt was forced to pause Question Time as authorities ushered the protestors out of the public gallery.
The interruption came after it was revealed that a law created in honour of a teen who was stabbed to death in a random attack will be expanded across Queensland after a successful trial on the Gold Coast.
Jack was stabbed and later died after a random attack on the Gold Coast in 2019, with two teens jailed over his death.
Known as “Jack’s Law”, the legislation will increase police powers to undertake “wanding” - a search for weapons on members of the public.
A trial of wanding powers on the Gold Coast was highly successful, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said, with 197 weapons confiscated including machetes and knuckle dusters since the trial began last year.
Jack’s Law will now be expanded to all 15 safe night precincts in the state, and on public transport.
“Queenslanders have the right to feel safe in public,” the Premier said, adding the government believed the new laws would save lives.
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