Page 282 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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Again, on 12 April 1991, under the heading "Wayne Berry, MLA, Media Release", I quote:
So far we have been confronted with a massive bungle in health with blowouts in budgets and gross withdrawal of services as the Government moves to close down over 30 per cent of our hospital
capacity.
Beds disappearing - well, well, well! But, of course, Mr Berry saw the light. Mr Berry had his conversion on the road to Damascus. Something remarkable happened.
Mr Kaine: And Damascus is on the Acton Peninsula.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. On about 6 June 1991 a shaft of light hit Mr Berry as he was walking along. "Yes", he says, "waiting lists are not the answer. Bed numbers are not the answer. The number of people suffering is not the answer. It is throughput. Throughput is all I need to worry about. Throughput will see me through". Madam Speaker, the fact of life is, of course, that throughput is no empirical test at all. There is no standard of throughput. You cannot look just at throughput, because throughput is independent of the number of people who are demanding services. If you increase your throughput through the hospital system by 10 per cent, and we certainly have not done that, but the demand from the population of the ACT or the region has increased by 20 per cent, clearly you have a problem. Clearly your efficiency has declined.
We want a measure for the hospital system which actually tells us whether things are getting better or whether they are not. Throughput clearly does not do that. "We are doing more people", says Mr Berry. In fact, you are doing more people. You are really doing them in the eye by putting them on the waiting lists, making them wait longer and longer for surgery, making sure that people waiting for that pain-relieving surgery are continuing to suffer. Those are Mr Berry's own words.
How bad does it have to get before this Government admits that there is a problem? What test, what measure, what level, what watermark has to be passed before Mr Berry and his recalcitrant Government will say to the people of the Territory, "Yes, we have a problem."? Give us any test, any test at all, that we can look at empirically. Of course, you cannot. We have seen further pathetic and ridiculous excuses from this Government: Doctors have caused the recent blow-out. What was your excuse in the previous three years? You do not have one, of course.
Madam Speaker, Mr Berry is a fanatic. He attributes waiting lists to doctors overservicing, without a shred of evidence, and he is opposed to the creation of any private facilities - the only option we have in the reasonably long term for reducing pressure on our hospital system - because he thinks it is bad. He thinks it is ideologically incorrect and should not happen. This is the man who buys out of the necessity to rely on the system by having private health insurance of his own. That is hypocrisy of the worst order. This man can get away from the problems of the public health system if he wants to, but he continues to say that other people, perhaps people who cannot afford to get private health insurance, do not have that capacity, do not have a system without the pressures that are placed on it now. If he was defending a public hospital system that could cope I could understand, but he cannot and he will not, and he stands condemned for that.
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