Page 2897 - Week 10 - Thursday, 7 October 2021
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of the people of Canberra, I am going to hold you to account regarding that promise. Why are our hospital waiting lists the worst in the country?
What did we hear yesterday? Nothing that resolves the problem. On behalf of the people of Canberra, I ask you: at what point do you actually accept responsibility for the state of the health system that you administer? After 20 years of Labor and Greens government, Minister, there is no-one left to blame. You must take responsibility.
The only people being seen on time in our emergency department are those at death’s door; and, when they are treated, they are treated by our highly dedicated, passionate healthcare workers. But as soon as we look further into the urgent and semi-urgent categories, the statistics are woeful. We have targets in those areas of 75 and 70 per cent seen on time, respectively, yet the latest data from yesterday’s budget papers showed another year of failure.
For the semi-urgent category, only 48 per cent of presentations were seen within the clinically recommended 60 minutes. For the urgent category, the number was appalling, at 29 per cent. That is 46 per cent below the government’s own target, and it has been like this for years.
That is not the only issue. I have been contacted by numerous health workers across our system who are fearful of going to work, and have been fearful of going to work during the current lockdown, because they did not have the correctly fitted personal protective equipment with respect to their masks. As people know, face masks are uncomfortable and are hard to fit correctly. To counter this, it is supposed to be standard practice for healthcare workers to undertake a “fit test” of different makes and models of face mask to find one that specifically suits their face structure and guarantees that they are protected while at work. Each person fit tested receives a card that states what brand and size mask is safe for them to use.
Despite Canberra Health Services having had over a year to prepare for the arrival of COVID community transmission in the ACT, in just the last month nurses were sent into a COVID ward without having undertaken proper fit testing procedures to ensure that their masks would actually protect them from COVID-19.
When we went into lockdown and I started getting calls from people closely associated with and working at the hospital, I was shocked. The first COVID cases were arriving and the wards which would care for them were not properly ready. The minister had not bothered to ensure that the nurses’ and physicians’ masks were properly fit tested. Fit testing appointments were only available on Wednesday afternoons and were booked out for months in advance for those lucky enough to get a slot. These people are mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters in our community.
We hear that some makes of mask are in short supply and that other brands are being substituted for the ones that nurses have actually been fit tested for. Minister, maybe you can update the Assembly on whether the healthcare workers who have contracted COVID-19 at the Canberra Hospital had been properly fittested and were wearing the correct make and model of mask.
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