Page 410 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 May 1992
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I should like to mention two further matters. Firstly, I agree with Mr Berry that we need to direct more attention to the provision of non-acute services, but this will not be achieved while Mr Berry makes cuts to community nursing and other community-based health facilities. My second and related point is that community nurses are particularly important if day surgery is to achieve its potential in our health system. We cannot just "shove 'em through quicker", as suggested by a Labor interjection during the last sitting week. The fact is that day surgery patients may well suffer unless there is adequate back-up and unless proper care is available when they return from hospital.
Day surgery is an important innovation, but it will take time before it really makes inroads into waiting periods and the need for in-patient beds. The Minister for Health seems to think day surgery will be the instant panacea for all his funding problems. It will not. As Dr Greg Herring, a member of the National Day Surgery Committee, said to the Select Committee on Hospital Bed Numbers:
I think it is going to take probably another ten years before day surgery develops sufficiently in Australia to make even a small dint on the necessity for inpatient beds or even the provision of day surgery facilities within a private hospital or indeed a public hospital.
We should not expect day surgery to work miracles in the immediate future. Day surgery will not work while the infrastructure required for it to work is left unfunded. For instance, the 30-bed procedures unit at Calvary Hospital, while completed last year, is still not operational - I imagine, due to a lack of funds.
Mr Berry: Ask the Calvary board.
MRS CARNELL: With $800,000 less, yes, Mr Berry. I repeat: Day surgery will not reach its potential unless there are sufficient funds available to improve all levels of domiciliary care.
In summary, we do not object to a statement charting positive developments in the area of health, but we do object to a display of credit taking, with no new ideas, with no direction, and with little obvious capacity to address the very real problems in our health system.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.26): Madam Speaker, this statement is not about World Health Day at all, as Mrs Carnell indicated; it is about ACT health. In fact, when someone asked me, "Have you seen the statement about Heart Health Day?", I thought, "What is he talking about? That has nothing to do with it". This is a statement entirely about ACT health, and it is another one of those sweated apologias that this Minister is compelled to resort to every so often to try to salvage a bit of self-respect from the current shambles that ACT health is in.
The fact is that this statement, so-called, on World Health Day is thinly based on facts, shrill and thoroughly unconvincing. Speaking as the ACT's longest serving Minister for Health, I have to say that if we examine the statement in detail we find very little in it to justify the assertion repeated throughout that under this Government the ACT health system is full of good news. For goodness sake, good news! What is the definition of "good news"? We have to ask ourselves, in particular, what evidence the Government brings forward to support the claim that under Labor there is lots of good news in our health system.
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