A senate committee sitting in outback New South Wales has heard hospital staff were directed not to attend a public hearing on federal health cuts.
The Senate Select Committee on Health is investigating the impact of reduced Commonwealth funding for state hospitals and health care.
Today’s sitting in Broken Hill is the committee’s last in a number of visits to regional centres around the country.
Broken Hill doctor Steve Flecknoe-Brown addressed the committee before lunch and told senators that staff from the Far West Local Health District were directed in an email not to attend.
In the email, seen by the ABC, staff were told that “members of the Executive are not to attend the public hearing or the round table discussions.”
Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill, committee chair, said the email, from the LHD’s chief executive Stuart Riley, was “tantamount to an official gag.”
“[It] begs the question: what is the NSW Health Department so eager to hide from the Senate inquiry that it gets a senior administrator to send out such an order?” Senator O’Neill said in a statement.
“Are there impacts on rural health as a result of the Abbott Government’s savage cuts to health and hospitals that the NSW and Federal governments don’t want the committee to know about?”
Dr Flecknoe-Brown said he was surprised by the directive.
“You certainly would have had a lot more information if these people had been able to speak, because they’re experts in the field,” he said.
In a statement a spokesman for the Far West LHD said that the invitation to attend the public hearing was “respectfully declined by NSW Health as the NSW Government has not provided a submission to the Inquiry.”
A statement from Mr Riley said it would have been inappropriate to make official submissions to the committee when the New South Wales government had not submitted a response.
The committee will hear presentations from other Broken Hill doctors, as well as representatives from the Maari Ma Health Aboriginal Corporation and the Sydney University Department of Rural Health.
The committee’s final report is due on June 20.