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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 488 ..

are legion. I know of two stories concerning Canberra hospital—our hospital. A young fellow with a broken leg waited for about three days for his leg to be fixed. Another young fellow who broke his ankle in the early hours of Sunday morning—he had a double fracture—spent almost a week on morphine before he could get surgery to correct it. That kid could not get his broken ankle fixed because there was no available theatre time and no doctor to do the surgery for him. We have a problem whether or not the minister cares to acknowledge it.

I have spoken often about the Labor government’s use of part-time health ministers. Many of the problems that we are faced with today can be attributed to that part-time attitude. Mr Stanhope did little in health, except establish a pattern of spending more and getting less. After 12 months he then flicked the health portfolio to Mr Corbell. Members might remember this old joke: When premiers want to ruin any minister’s career they give him or her the health portfolio. Mr Corbell, under his own steam, was well on his way towards ruining his career, but I would suggest that the health portfolio is abetting his downfall.

None of Labor’s health ministers have had any passion for the job. Mr Stanhope launched a foolish, unnecessary, and bureaucratic restructure that limits the capacity of hospital managers to get on with the job of maximising performance for the public. Mr Corbell is in denial about the key results that emerged after he was forced by the Assembly to table the latest monthly and annual reports. His latest utterances about the Productivity Commission show that he is still in denial. His attempt at putting a spin on this latest crisis is scraping the bottom of the barrel. He does not seem to know why this is happening and he has little idea about how he might improve the situation. It is about time that the Minister stopped casting around for creative spin and concentrated some energy on the health portfolio, in particular, the ailing Canberra hospital.

The Minister’s latest excuse, a two-part answer, was to blame the former government. Labor refers to sections 11A or 11B of the ACT health budget when it wants to get out of a problem. However, when we look at the numbers we realise that that is not true. Mr Corbell will say that the report of the Productivity Commission covers part of the last year in which the former government was in office, which is true. In the months of July, August, September and October, before the change of government, 3,595 people were awaiting surgery.

When Labor came to office it immediately injected $6 million into the hospital system in an attempt to fix the crisis. Over the next eight months that cash injection of $6 million took the average number of people on the waiting list to 3,678—an additional 83 patients in that period. The pattern of this government is to fix a problem by throwing money at it. However, it does not achieve any results. That demonstrates the management, direction and leadership of this government. When that line did not fly Mr Corbell said in his press release—a corker of a press release—that was issued late on Monday:

ACT Liberals want to run our public hospitals on the cheap...

Our half-a-billion-dollar health system is not cheap, but a growing number of people are on the waiting list because under Labor they cannot get an operation and they cannot get surgery. Mr Corbell then states in his press release:

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