Page 2898 - Week 10 - Thursday, 7 October 2021
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This time last year I raised the need for better treatment of junior doctors. They are bullied at times, and at times there have been issues with their pay. Wage theft is a serious matter. When these issues are raised, they are very slow to be rectified. Their work is hard work, and they need to be remunerated properly and according to the law.
Three years have passed since the report into bullying and harassment at the Canberra Hospital. A task force has been established to implement the culture review. Yesterday’s budget showed movement on the issue, but not the movement that we would have expected. That movement was the movement of $643,000 budgeted to be spent on implementing the culture review from 2020-21 to the 2021-22 financial year—another delay.
Endoscopy: this is the examination of a patient’s gastrointestinal tract with a camera, looking for possible health issues such as cancer, as we have already discussed in this place. It is a four- to six-hour day procedure. In April this year I moved a motion that highlighted that the public waiting list for endoscopy had blown out to 7,200 people. I have had reports to me of more people developing cancer while waiting for an endoscopy on our unbelievably long waiting list.
The minister explains all of the reasons why we have a long waiting list, but really, at the end of the day, what people want is a solution. Saying again, “We are working on it,” is not a solution. I noted yesterday that some money has been allocated to endoscopy, but why does it take a political fight for this to be addressed?
Also, during this lockdown over 1,000 good and kind former nurses have put their hands up to return to the workforce, but this minister cannot explain to a press conference the process by which those whose registrations have lapsed, even quite recently, will be re-registered.
We knew a year ago, or 18 months ago, that if things got difficult here—and they certainly have—we would be calling out for retired and career-change nurses to come back. It was discussed with me in Chief Health Officer briefings in the last term. But from the information released publicly it seems that, of the 1,000 or more who volunteered to come back, only around 200 were back on the rosters.
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MRS JONES: Okay, I will be glad to hear it. As we go on with opening up and we see a higher demand for our hospital services, does the minister have a plan to guide nurses through the re-registration process, any funds to assist with paying for that, and getting them back in the wards assisting health staff who are fed up with the stress and distress of this government and this minister’s inability to really provide a proper, appropriate workplace for them?
The Chief Minister has been weighing in on this area too. He claimed in his press conference on 22 September that if staffed and prepped for COVID-19 patients, the Garran Surge Centre would take our ICU beds into the low hundreds. It will not.
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