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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 402 ..

MR STANHOPE

waiting lists and the list went the wrong way. I have heard it said, perhaps in jest, "Thank goodness he did not have any more to deal with the waiting list. There is no knowing where it would be if we had provided him with additional funds".

It is just two weeks since the Assembly supported the Opposition's concern at Mr Moore's inability adequately to manage finances, staff and waiting times at the Canberra Hospital. During this time, Mr Moore claimed that he was awaiting direction from the Assembly's Health and Community Care Committee before proceeding to spend the remaining bonus funding. Yet, at the Estimates Committee hearings last year, he argued that he was addressing systemic problems in order to distribute the money accordingly. As we all know, of that $16m, very little has actually been committed and less still has been expended - and the waiting lists grow and grow and the residents of Canberra continue to wait for their surgery. Mr Moore is simply making excuses for his inability to take decisive action and commit this funding to addressing significant long-term problems within our health system. The longer he continues to procrastinate, the longer the waiting lists grow.

In January, the Health Minister recommended accelerated ward closures and endorsed a scoping study to examine staffing cuts of up to 5 per cent across all of the surgical services as a way of reducing the burgeoning budget blow-out. He blamed the inflexibility of the enterprise bargaining negotiations for contributing to the ongoing blow-out in funding. Instead of approaching the news of the blow-out in a considered manner, Mr Moore's spontaneous knee-jerk reaction merely succeeded in creating uncertainty within the hospital and sent nursing staff into panic over their jobs. Now, the reports are of funding cuts of 20 per cent to the medical services budget. These cuts would be achieved by moves such as closing outpatient services and having staff specialists leave the hospital to establish private rooms. There is no cost reduction to the community in moves like that. All a move such as that would do is transfer costs out of the hospital system and onto the individual patient.

Cuts of 20 per cent in the hospital's medical services budget would have a direct and serious impact on critical areas of care. One of the wards targeted by the hospital and not denied by Mr Moore in this context is the radiation oncology ward. Canberra has an ageing population - quite rapidly ageing, by national standards - and the incidence of cancer is high in our community. On average, almost two people a day die of cancer-related diseases in Canberra, yet oncology - this most important discipline within the hospital's medical services division - is facing a 20 per cent cut to its budget. The impact of such a suggestion on those people within our community that have cancer, and on their families, really is quite devastating. For those people with cancer to be faced at this time of uncertainty with the prospect that the radiation oncology ward at Canberra Hospital might lose up to 20 per cent of its funding must be most devastating to their state of mind; yet that has been seriously considered by this Government as a means of addressing the fact that they have a Health Minister who has allowed the budget to blow out by over $10m in his short term in office. And what of service standards? The Australian Medical Association says that the hospital would never recover from cuts of the magnitude proposed. They would force Canberra hospitals below the standards of New Zealand and Victoria.

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