Page 2912 - Week 10 - Thursday, 7 October 2021
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system and say, “Hasn’t Labor done a great job?” and for Mr Davis to say, “Haven’t the Greens and the Labor Party done a great job together,” when we find ourselves in this position.
I invite you to read a paper that was produced by the Canberra Liberals in 2010 titled “The state of our health”. It was a Canberra Liberals health discussion paper, which pointed out a way forward and pointed out some of the problems back then that just were not addressed. It pointed out that ED patients were not seen on time. When the Liberal Party left government back in 2000, 97 per cent were seen on time. By 2009, that had deteriorated to 53 per cent—
Mrs Jones: It has never recovered.
MR HANSON: It has never recovered. In terms of elective surgery waiting times, the mean waiting time when the Liberals left government was 40 days. That has nearly doubled. By 2008, it was 72 days and, again, it has not recovered.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the points that Mrs Jones has made today are important ones. They should be acknowledged. This motion should be passed. The amendments just try to revise the whole motion and revise the truth. It is about time this lot acknowledged their complete stuff-ups over more than a decade that have left us in the position where we have a hospital that is struggling and our hardworking hospital staff are working in conditions that they should not have to accept and, if the government had followed through on what they had promised, would not have to put up with. I commend Mrs Jones for her motion. I am disappointed that the government are not accepting the problems in our health system and doing everything they can to fix them.
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (3.59): What a surprising debate! None of the issues in the motion have really been denied. The minister started off her response by claiming holus-bolus that they were untrue. But then, in the discussion of them, junior doctors have had and are having the nation’s highest rates of bullying. Staff at Canberra Health Services are having to work with bullying and harassment. She knows that. We have had no evidence produced to the contrary. We have seen Canberrans waiting too long on the endoscopy waiting list. That is actually acknowledged by the fact that there has been some money put into it in this budget.
The minister has admitted that we have seen a decline in real terms in our investment. She admitted that in estimates earlier this year. We have seen the Canberra Hospital expansion and replacement promised at three elections and it has not yet been delivered. The $375 million that was budgeted for the Canberra Hospital expansion in 2012 was reallocated to the tram. That has not been denied either. The minister did not even touch on her commitment in January this year to fix the ED wait time averages.
Ms Stephen-Smith: It was actually not what I committed to and you know that, so why bother? I am correcting you about 10 times—
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