LABOR’S candidate for Stafford Dr Anthony Lynham knew he had been overpaid in the health payroll bungle but the high-profile surgeon was told he did not have to repay the money until he left Queensland Health, his party says.
As revealed in the Tales from the Corridors of Power column on couriermail.com.au yesterday, Dr Lynham owes money to Queensland Health as a result of overpayments made during the bungled rollout of a new health payroll system several years ago.
Labor has demanded an investigation into how his personal payroll information came to be in the public domain ahead of the July 19 poll.
“If there are any issues Dr Lynham is more than happy to sort them out with Queensland Health but to his knowledge Queensland Health has not contacted him,” she said.
But she took aim at the Government for playing “gutter politics” by releasing the information.
“How did someone access Dr Anthony Lynham’s personnel file. If Campbell Newman does not launch an immediate investigation I will be asking the tough question at estimates,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
The Government, however, denies it came from them and has instead tried to paint Opposition MP Jo-Ann Miller as the culprit.
But Mr Newman said the LNP had nothing to do with leaking the information, which was published in The Courier-Mail on Thursday.
“I’m very confident that’s not the case. I can simply assure people of that,” he said.
He said there were mechanisms available to Dr Lynham if he wanted to lodge a complaint.
Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said it was Ms Miller who had the most to lose from Dr Lynham’s election, not the government, who would lose the seat if Dr Lynham won.
“No one should be surprised that the question would be asked when some 49,000 out of 80,000 Queensland Health employees were wrongly paid.
“No one should be surprised that someone would ultimately ask that question of the Labor Party or the Labor candidate and I think it’s wrong to draw the conclusion that it has come from within government circles.
“The person who has got the most to lose from the election of Dr Lynham is Jo-Miller. Maybe it’s come from Mrs Miller, maybe its come from within disgruntled union people.
“Within my office we received an inquiry from a media outlet early this week asking us to confirm a figure. We refused to do that because it’s not our business, that’s Dr Lynham’s business.”
Premier Campbell Newman said he was confident the leak did not come from the government but an investigation would be launched if a complaint was made.
###