Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2971 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I withdraw that. I say, instead, that Mr Berry has been heard to utter tarradiddles on this question. Let him give us a standard and see how we live up to it. Let him settle on some measure of a good Health Minister and a good hospital system. Do not keep changing them according to what the objective of the Labor Party is. Settle on a single test, and let us try to meet that test.

Mr Berry, I think you know that in Mrs Carnell we have, for the first time, a Minister for Health in this town who actually knows the health system inside out - I make that statement inclusive of all previous Health Ministers - who is actually able to grapple with the real issues, the important issues, the patient-centred issues in the hospital system, and is actually making some headway on the important issues. That, Mr Speaker, is the important test. If Mr Berry has a better test, let him articulate it.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (4.21), in reply: Mr Speaker, I think there are a couple of issues that need to be clarified after Mr Berry's statement.

Mr De Domenico: Only a couple?

MRS CARNELL: Actually, there are thousands; but I just do not want to put the Assembly through that today, Mr De Domenico. There are issues that need to be clarified. Mr Berry tended to, I suppose, insinuate that somehow or other people in accident and emergency were not taking interstate transfers or took them very rarely. I think it is very important to say that our people in accident and emergency are taking an extraordinary number of interstate transfers. Just to clarify the issue, Mr Speaker, over the months of March, April, May, June and July 1996, the Emergency Department at the Canberra Hospital has taken 320 interstate transfers. For example, Mr Speaker, from Batemans Bay there were 30; Bega, 12; Bombala, six; Braidwood, six; Cooma, 57; Queanbeyan, 72; and Yass, 32. There were 320 emergency transfers, Mr Speaker. That is a very good effort.

Mr Berry thinks that we are paid to take emergency transfers from the rest of New South Wales. The fact is that we are paid to run an ACT health system and, on occasions, New South Wales gets around to paying us to look after their patients as well. They do not get around to it as often as we would like them to, Mr Speaker. But our primary job is to provide services for the ACT and, of course, surrounding districts as well; but, first and foremost, the Federal Government and ACT taxpayers fund the system to look after the ACT. Those emergency transfers have been in a wide range of different areas of medicine - 20 in cardiology; 20 in general surgery; 38 in neurology; the list goes on, Mr Speaker.

I think it is also very important to note that Mr Berry is raving on, as usual, about an emergency bypass. A person from the ACT needing emergency treatment has not, to my knowledge, ever during the term of this Government been refused treatment. We have made sure that not one ACT resident has been refused treatment. I think that is a very important issue, Mr Speaker. Mr Berry is trying to give some sort of indication that

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .