Page 4752 - Week 15 - Thursday, 16 December 1993
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Let us have a look at hospital beds. The ACT still has the lowest number of hospital beds, both public and private, in this country. Only two months ago we saw another nine short-stay beds closed at Woden Valley Hospital. With occupancy rates prior to the VMOs dispute running at close to 100 per cent, our hospital just cannot see more people, or see them any faster, without shoving people out before they are ready to go home. What has the Minister done about that? Absolutely nothing.
Where is the extra money in community nursing? It simply is not there. What about activity levels, Minister? You proudly said this year that you were not going to budget for any increase in activity levels. He was right, was he not, because he does not have any doctors. This is probably the only thing that the Minister was right about.
Mr Kaine: He does not have any bus drivers.
MRS CARNELL: No.
Mr Kaine: He does not have any nurses.
MRS CARNELL: He does not have very many nurses. In the first three months of this year, when he did have doctors, what did we see? We saw activity go up 2 per cent, almost exactly the same as it did in the first quarter last year. So, wrong again, Minister. Activity levels actually did go up, until you got rid of the doctors, and now you might be coming in on track.
There is a huge number of promises, Madam Speaker, that this Minister simply has not kept. If we look at the traditional Christmas closures in Canberra, he has managed that very well. We have to start calling them not Christmas close-downs but summer shut-downs. Instead of closing for four weeks this year, we now see a six-and-a-half weeks closure at Woden Valley Hospital. They really shut down almost indefinitely. In Victoria, Madam Speaker, a State that has embraced reform in their health system, a State that has embraced case-mix funding, we see waiting lists going down by a thousand over the last year and we also see Christmas close-downs virtually eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced, because people want to work. They want to work over Christmas because they want to see patients. What a dramatic difference from our health system here! I nearly forgot to mention that our hospital operating costs are still some 30 per cent above national averages.
Mr Berry: They are not, you know.
MRS CARNELL: On all available figures our costs are still some 30 per cent above national averages. I must, however, and I think it is important, congratulate the Minister on the issue of staffing. The Minister single-handedly has united staff in ACT Health like no-one else. They are united on one thing - they hate the Minister's guts. Visiting medical officers, nurses, allied health professionals, salaried doctors - the list goes on. What do they agree on? They agree that Mr Berry cannot run Health. That is also what the Canberra Times said in, I think, March 1992. They said:
When Rosemary Follett forms her new Cabinet, she would do well to think of shifting Wayne Berry into a new portfolio. Health, it seems, is a little too much for him ... Mr Berry, in short, is himself one of the major problems in ACT Health.
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