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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2143 ..
MR MOORE
(continuing):If we run a hospital so that it can always handle this kind of pressure-for example, we staff the intensive care unit so that it can always handle 18 beds, but it only runs something like five or six beds through the norm-that would be a huge waste of money, money that we could spend on providing respite care for somebody in the disability area, for example, or money that we could spend on having another operation done for somebody who is elderly and needs a hip replaced because they are in great pain. So we are very careful to make sure that we have these processes in place.
As long as we take the attitude that it is better to make sure that we use our money in the most effective way, there will always be times that the hospital, like every other hospital in Australia, especially every teaching hospital in Australia, comes under these sorts of pressures. Sometimes it will happen quite rapidly because of trauma.
One of the things that add to this aspect of the intensive care unit, of course, is the growing number of trauma cases that are being brought in by helicopter. We are at the moment examining the impact. It was first raised with me some five or six weeks ago, maybe a little bit longer than that, that the use of the helicopter was increasing the trauma load. I said that we would have to monitor that, get some figures, to see whether it will require extra funding.
Mr Wood
: Where does the helicopter come into it?MR MOORE
: I hear Mr Wood interjecting. I have to say to Mr Wood that I have tried very hard to answer the question fully and properly.Mr Wood
: You have overdone it.MR MOORE
: There is no information I have put in there that is repetitive.Mr Wood
: You can take as long with the next answer you give.MR MOORE
: Sometimes, Mr Wood, as you know, my answer will be just yes or no, but, when a full explanation is required, I try to give it in the most effective way I can.MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, my question, through you, is to the Chief Minister. On 25 May I asked you a question about the quarterly travel report and a particular trip on which your media representative somehow became competent to represent the government on an overseas tour. In responding to my question, you said:
I sent Mr Harris because I believed his interest in the area, his knowledge in the area and his capacity to report back to me and to other members of this Assembly were exemplary. That has been proven. Mr Harris has already reported to me and will report to this Assembly in the very near future. I am very surprised that anybody would doubt his capacity to handle a trip like this and to report back very appropriately.
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