Mr FITZGIBBON (6:22 PM) —For around 10 years now, Hunter Area Health Service has been attempting to privatise Cessnock's Allandale aged care facility. It is a cause that has been taken up with great gusto by the service's current CEO, Professor Katherine McGrath. The sale is not about improving care services but rather about saving Hunter Health around $3 million annually.

The sale of Allandale is a proposal I have consistently and constantly opposed, and I remain opposed to it. For Cessnock it will mean job losses and bed losses, and will bring no benefit whatsoever. Yet I am advised that, despite opposition from me and from members of the Cessnock community, the sale is about to be signed off. It is my view that Hunter Health is prepared to go to great lengths to shore up its budgetary position. Indeed, I fear that Hunter Health has sought at times to discredit the service and care of its own hardworking and dedicated employees—a strategy designed to question whether Hunter Health, which has as its focus acute care, should be in the business of providing aged care services.

Almost two years ago I was shocked to read that two male nurses at Allandale had been suspended and charged by police for allegedly kidnapping and physically and sexually assaulting elderly male dementia patients. What struck me about the case at the time was the level of support those two gentlemen maintained amongst their Allandale colleagues and work mates. No-one who knew them well could accept that they were capable of perpetrating the acts for which they had been accused and charged.

I was tempted at the time, in the face of that overwhelming support, to question Hunter Health's motives in referring the case to the police. Indeed, at the time I also found strange the timing of the announcement that the charges had been laid or at least a police investigation had been called, and the way it was announced. But of course—and it is relevant to our current environment—I did the responsible thing and allowed the judicial processes to determine the fate of those who were being accused. On 4 March of this year, John Raymond Procter of Cessnock and Paul Ronald Mason of Belford were acquitted on all charges. Following a four-day hearing in Cessnock local court, Magistrate Crews concluded that the prosecution had failed to make out its case.

John and Paul have 36 years of nursing experience between them. Neither will work as a nurse again. After two years of extreme stress, John Procter is $70,000 poorer due to legal expenses. I assume that Paul has a similar debt to clear. I am going to express my faith in our justice system and assume the magistrate got it right. It appears John Procter and Paul Mason and their families have suffered a great injustice. Of course the media coverage of the charges against the two was infinitely greater than the media coverage of their acquittal. They will always wonder whether they were simply pawns in a larger privatisation game.