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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 201 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

wrote to me and asked to have a copy as well. I have done that. He wrote to me and said, "Can I table it in the Assembly?". I have agreed to do that. In agreeing to do that, I would say to members that the surgeons see these lists as particularly important in terms of the way they operate and were very reluctant to have it done, argued very strongly with me not to do it. However, in the interests of the patients it is appropriate for us to do it. We may now need to look at the ownership of those lists by individual surgeons. We know that in a public program nobody is entitled to a specific surgeon; the surgeons, however, own them.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The Minister's time has expired. Would you like an extension, Minister?

MR MOORE: I seek an extension, thank you, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Is leave granted?

MR MOORE: In fact, Mr Speaker, I seek leave to be able to complete my task here. I think it will take me about 15 minutes. So, I seek leave to be able to speak for a further 15 minutes.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: I thank members. I will still see whether I can do it quicker than that. The department is in the course of examining methodologies behind current data collection, as there is some room in the current system for patients to be doubly listed at the two main hospitals. In addition, the hospital is currently running an audit of its listed patients, at my request, to identify listings which are no longer there at all. There are early indications that the listing process may reveal a significant over-reporting of the number of persons on the waiting lists. That is not something that I should use to pretend that lists are suddenly lower, and I will not do so; but it does help point out that list sizes are not as useful a statistic as waiting times.

Mr Speaker, I did mention earlier things such as circumcisions, breast reductions and other non-clinically required surgery. I will certainly propose for community debate whether those things should come off the waiting lists, because what happens at the moment and what happened under Mr Berry, for example, is that the circumcisions that are on the waiting lists actually just do not get done. People believe that they are going to get done but young men have been on the waiting list from the time they were babies. I understand that there are some people who are still on that waiting list awaiting a public, non-clinically required circumcision after 12 years. We are really, effectively, tricking people into believing that it is going to happen and I think that that is entirely unacceptable.

The final thing that I would like to say on waiting lists is that this matter is being considered by the Health and Community Care Committee. The Government will put a submission to that committee, but I am very keen to work with the committee to see what we can do to reduce the waiting lists.

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