Page 729 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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Mr Kaine: For the better.
MR BERRY: Mr Kaine says that they have got better. Does that mean that he endorses the fact that in our hospital system 1,500 people are waiting for beds? I think it does. He endorses the fact that in our hospitals 1,500 people are waiting for beds. The Chief Minister supports longer waiting lists. He endorses the Minister for Health's policy of making sick people wait. There has been a massive 60 per cent blow-out in these waiting lists. As I have said, there are 1,500 people waiting. The Chief Minister is smiling. He is not providing services; he is saving money. Incidentally, it is costing more as the hospital budget blows out.
There are fewer beds in our public hospital system - one hospital is half closed, one is a building site, and the other is claiming that they cannot fit in any more beds - in spite of Minister Humphries' promises, and those of the Chief Minister, that the system would be able to cope. Ask the people who are waiting whether the system can cope, because they know that it is not coping. Of course it is not coping.
There are not enough staff. No-one wants to work in this Minister's hospital system. His recruitment advertisements yield no new staff at all. None of you would be surprised at that, having seen the misleading advertising that was presented to our last Estimates Committee. All we get is promises and statements from the Minister such as, "I am confident". People can see through these hollow promises. Nothing has changed, except that it has got worse. The people who have been turned away and sent to the private sector know that there are not enough beds. They know that the system is not up to scratch. The people watching loved ones suffer while they wait and wait for an ambulance to arrive know that the Ambulance Service is understaffed.
Mothers and children and the aged in Weston Creek know that the Weston Creek Health Centre should not have closed; it is needed. We now find out that it was not necessary to close it. It was part of this Minister's rush to close the schools; that is what caused the closure of the Weston Creek Health Centre. The education bungle will long be remembered in the ACT. The patients and staff at Woden Valley Hospital know, of course, that it cannot cope now, let alone when the fast tracking closes Royal Canberra Hospital prematurely at the end of the year. Just add up the figures. The beds are not there. The Woden Valley Hospital is a building site. There is no doubt about it.
Why not use the existing facilities at Royal Canberra Hospital while you build the new expanded facilities at Woden Valley Hospital and keep Royal Canberra Hospital open? Why do you not keep Royal Canberra Hospital open?
Mr Jensen: What do we do? Do we shift everything from Woden?
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