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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2293 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

ongoing treatment, fewer hospital complications, shorter patient stays in hospitals, and-this last point will greatly please the health minister-a demonstrated decrease in costs overall. This type of legislation implements a staffing system based on patients needs rather than a budget bottom line. In California, it is sensibly being phased in over a two-year period. I hope to have this legislation ready for the next sitting week, and I thank the Australian Nursing Federation for their assistance.

Mr Speaker, I too echo the words of Mr Stanhope and his concern about the performance of this government and the officials who handled the hepatitis C disaster between the years of 1994 to early 1998. I have to say that this whole scenario continues to amaze me. It took several years before anyone began to consider the matter serious enough to even bother looking for those they knew had been exposed to the virus. What truly astounds me is that it took four years before someone bothered to even tell the health minister, despite the notification of pending law suits and weekly meetings with the health minister of the day.

I still cannot tell whether a select group of officials have lied about their inaction, or whether this was just plain incompetence on their part. I very much suspect that it is one or the other. With the limited documentation I have received from the minister on this matter, I cannot accept that in four years of considering the impact of giving blood infected with hepatitis C to a large number of patients, and with the knowledge that law suits could be pending, not one health official bothered even to mention in passing to the health minister that there was a problem on the horizon. I suspect that we probably will never know the full story, and in the meantime, as Mr Stanhope said, people may well have died as a result.

Mr Speaker, my next comment on this budget is about the management of the Canberra Hospital. From time to time I have had difficulty with the attitude of this government and the attitude it has shown to our health system, and in particular to our public hospitals. I have said this several times before, but I repeat it to the government-you are not a business. Yes, it is beneficial to operate efficiently and in a businesslike manner, but government is about providing leadership and community services, not just the bottom line.

I feel that all too often this all important principle is forgotten when it comes time to divvy up the tax dollars. There are a number of things that must be afforded in the budget before we move on to those with a lesser priority. Services such as schools, public transport, police, public housing and hospitals are essential to Canberra and are not optional business units in the ACT economy. As a further example, I consider it nonsense for the government to treat last year's budget blow-out by the Canberra Hospital as a loan that must be repaid. This attitude, in the name of efficiency, puts the bottom line before patients' needs and in my opinion is back to front.

My office regularly receives calls from members of the public about their experiences at the hospital. Naturally, we usually only hear from those who are unhappy, and we refer them on to the Health Complaints Commissioner. The latest tale of woe involves the surgeon, Dr Phillip Jeans, and his patient who unfortunately died while waiting for an operating theatre bed. I do not wish to debate the circumstances of this matter other than to comment that both sides acknowledge that the patient waited for over six hours for a potentially life-saving emergency operation with his life visibly ebbing away. I look

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