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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2241 ..
MR WOOD: I have a supplementary question. Mr Moore was going to address the particular case, which raises the point for me that I do not think the hopeful patient that I was talking about would be impressed by that. How many other people on these waiting lists are of that order?
MR MOORE: Mr Wood, after question time, I will table for you the sort of information that you want, as I table constantly information on waiting times, so that you can see how people in category 1, category 2 and category 3 get taken care of.
Let me contrast the way that you approached the hospitals and the way that a former colleague of yours approached the hospitals. Many of you will remember Ms Annette Ellis when she was here in this chamber. One of the things that she did not do was just take a totally negative approach. In fact, when she chaired the Committee on Social Policy-Mrs Carnell was on the same one-she took a broad view and moved in a positive way to see what she could achieve as a member and was very successful in doing so. She wrote the following letter to me recently on behalf of a constituent whom many of you will know:
I recently received a letter from ... who advised that his friend...was taken suddenly ill and consequently hospitalised in Canberra during January/February of this year.
Ms Ellis attached a good news letter about how fantastic the Canberra Hospital is. Her letter continued:
...who is elderly required extensive treatment and nursing care while hospitalised-
the friend-
has asked me to pass on his praises to you and the medical and hospital staff who provided "first class" care and treatment to ...
I understand that...has since made a speedy recovery and is reunited with her family and friends in Victoria.
Ms Ellis was gracious enough to pass that on. She recognises that we have a fantastic hospital that is delivering extraordinary service.
I wish that those opposite who are so negative would sometimes recognise the extremely good things that go on in the 500,000-odd occasions of service that occur each year in the public health system in Canberra. Mr Wood, there is that example. As I said, we will work to improve on that and make sure that it does not happen, but when you have 500,000 occasions of care in a system like this one there are going to be mistakes made and there are going to be problems occurring.
In the past, the approach has been to cover them up. One of the very first things I did as minister was to appoint Ms Fiona Tito to make sure that we did not take that approach. Both the Chief Minister and I have been vigorously ensuring that privilege is available to doctors committees to make sure that they also do not take that approach, that what they
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