Page 5276 - Week 17 - Thursday, 13 December 1990
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I accept that; but this legislation has presented itself as a good opportunity for Labor to press forward with its policy of a legislative base for a health services complaints council. It would be a good thing if the members of the conservative Government opposite were prepared to endorse something such as this; but, noting that they will not even endorse the requirement for people within their system to participate in quality assurance activities, I suspect that it is hardly likely that they will accept a strong complaints unit. They will not tell us yet, but I am sure we will find out when the Minister gets to his feet.
The Minister has to accept that the power of life and death over patients is an enormous responsibility for medical professionals, and that applies to all levels of the professions. It does not apply just to medical doctors, and the Australian Labor Party recognises and supports and encourages all those professionals who continue to exercise this care with the utmost responsibility and diligence. But, at the same time, I think any abuse of such power or any negligence or any sort of deliberate act which acts against the interests of patients and users of our system must be guarded against. As members of this Assembly, we are charged with the responsibility to ensure that the guard is set up. It does not seem to me that the Government is very interested in that sort of instrumentality, but the Labor Opposition certainly is.
There is, in this city, a desperate need for a strong health complaints council. It needs to be there not only to act as a watchdog to receive complaints and to act on them, but also to act as a statutory body that would work to encourage better health care systems. As I have said, it is disappointing that the Government has been fairly lightweight in its attempts to protect our public hospital systems. This will give it the opportunity to review its position. Unfortunately - and I say this with a great deal of regret - the professionals do not have a strong history of providing publicly accessible procedures for the protection of the people in the community. In fact, the perception in the community is that the professionals spend more time protecting their own interests. That may or may not be the case, although it has been proven in some cases that the professionals need a watchdog, and they need some sort of statutory organisation to ensure that patients are protected.
I think that the secretive arrangements for the review of complaints should not continue any longer. My office is bombarded on a daily basis with complaints about different aspects of the health system. Unfortunately, there is little confidence in the current complaints unit. A survey was discussed in the Canberra Times last weekend - last Saturday, I think - and, as I recall, there was talk in that article about the lack of confidence in the current complaints unit. That is not a reflection on the people involved in the complaints unit; it is merely a tool of
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