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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2345 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

we heard Mr Berry dealing with providers quite a bit -

to get on with the day to day decision making about health priorities and management, which is an area in which Government should not interfere in any case.

Perhaps in other places government should not interfere in any case; but I would think that in this case government should interfere. One of the roles that this Government took on was to ensure that that was done properly. A week-and-a-half ago my sister-in-law was in the emergency section at Calvary Hospital. She had a broken arm. I just walked in there, as any other member of the Assembly would have done. Perhaps I should do more of it in the emergency areas. I had three or four people immediately lobbying me, including one rather vocal woman, who invited everybody else in the emergency area to come and point out to me how long they had been there. At that stage, my sister-in-law had been there for about 31/2 hours. The amount of frustration among people there was huge.

It is important that government understands what is going on in the day-to-day decision-making about health priorities and management, because at the moment it is not going well. You have only to talk to anybody - I talk to a range of people, and of course there are some exceptions - who has had anything to do with that sort of area of hospital management to realise that there is a level of frustration there that you see in very few other areas. I speak of that particular experience at Calvary. By the way, the reason why she had gone to Calvary was that the wait at Calvary was half the wait at Woden Valley Hospital. So, who knows what would have happened had I walked in and had to stand around in the emergency section at Woden Valley Hospital? Perhaps we should all do that, as a matter of checking out health priorities and health management and the frustration that people feel.

Madam Deputy Speaker, why should people have to wait three, 31/2 or four hours? It is a part of the culture to have to wait that long. I do not keep people waiting that long, nor does any member here. I imagine that the Chief Minister does not keep people waiting. On a number of occasions, I have had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for the Chief Minister, but it is very rare. I understand that that can happen when I have an appointment or when something is set up; but, if there is something wrong with the processes, then government does have to interfere. It is quite clear that you will have to.

So, no matter what you do in terms of this board, the responsibility should lie with management, from my perspective and from that of this Assembly. We should ask you the questions. I do not care how you go about finding the answers. If things are going wrong, we should go to you. I do not care about the process you use to fix them. You have been trying to convince this Assembly that your Health and Community Care Service Board will do that for you. I still do not believe that that will be the case; but I am prepared to give you, as the Government, the opportunity to try it. That is why I will be supporting this legislation in principle.

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