Page 2635 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES: If the Minister has not moved around enough within his own health service to realise that fact, I think that he ought to make an effort to get out of this place and to discover what is going on in the community health service in this community.
Mr Berry: This is what your whole argument is based on, Gary. You and the Right to Life people are all the same.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I face continuous interjections during this speech and I would ask for some protection in the course of my remarks.
MADAM SPEAKER: Continue, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Thank you, Madam Speaker. This community is not served by any cardiothoracic services at all. People requiring things like heart-lung operations, bypass surgery and so on routinely have to travel to places like Sydney to obtain that kind of service.
Mr Berry: Yes, and they will continue to. That is the place for them to get it.
MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, I am dismayed and distressed to hear the Minister say that he believes that that kind of service should continue to be provided outside the ACT. There is a pressing need. Each person who has to travel to Sydney or Melbourne to obtain that kind of service is separated, sometimes for days or even weeks, from their loved ones. They often are deprived of contact with their family for long periods of time. It is not an ideal environment in which to be recuperating. We cannot, as a community, be content to say that we are happy to see that kind of situation continue. If we have resources to put towards this area we should be doing so.
Madam Speaker, there is perhaps no area of greater need in the ACT at the present time than that of waiting lists. This Minister opposite made a great deal of capital during his period in opposition from what he described as outrageously unacceptable waiting lists on the part of the then Government. Since that Government lost office waiting lists have approximately doubled in size, and the Minister told the ABC the other day, as I recall, that waiting lists were no longer a criterion on which you should measure the effectiveness of our hospital system.
Madam Speaker, I think that that is an untenable explanation of this very serious situation facing our community. The Minister faces an explosion in the number of people who are needing elective surgery. We have nearly 3,000 people at present in the ACT who need elective surgery, and 345 of those people have been waiting for more than 12 months to obtain elective surgery places in our system. Madam Speaker, we are not talking about people just wanting plastic surgery or some kind of entirely optional service. We are talking about elderly people needing hip replacements; we are talking about women needing hysterectomies; we are talking about children needing grommets put in their ears; we are talking about older people needing cataracts removed from their eyes. These are serious situations.
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