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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 495 ..

After spending an entire weekend at the accident and emergency department, and after being told what was needed to be done to repair the ruptured crucial ligament and all those sorts of things, the clear message was that every day surgery was delayed it would jeopardise the chances of a full recovery. That incident occurred in September and she was given an appointment on 2 November. She was told that every day surgery was delayed it would jeopardise the chances of a full recovery, but she had to wait 2½ months before she even got an appointment.

This girl’s family did what most families do—they took their chequebook and their private health insurance and they went to see somebody else, in this case in Sydney. She had the operation done that week because that was what the medical people said was needed. Mr Smyth referred earlier to people with broken legs who were on emergency surgery waiting lists for a week or two or three days. On one of those occasions, because there were no beds in the orthopaedic ward the patient, who was six feet tall, was put into a bed in a medical ward that had been made for someone who was five feet six inches tall.

This patient, who had broken legs and who was on morphine, had one foot hanging over the end of the bed. He was not very impressed at having to wait three days—on morphine and with his foot sticking out the end of the bed—for his leg to be fixed up when he was on the emergency list. The patient was not on the category 1 list; he was on the list that comes before the category 1 list that requires immediate treatment.

Mr Smyth referred also to a headline in the Canberra Times earlier this week that indicated taxpayers were paying more for their health services but were getting less in return. That is definitely the case. The elective waiting list has blown out and there has been a demonstrable failure in the emergency surgery area. The 2002-03 report of ACT Health clearly shows that emergency treatment times are declining. Page 25 of the report states that, compared to 2001, category 2 patients not seen in the required 10 minutes increased from 1 per cent to 9 per cent—a 900 per cent or ninefold increase.

Category 3 patients not seen in the required 10 minutes increased from 3 to 23 per cent, a sevenfold increase, and category 4 patients not seen in the required hour increased from 28 to 45 per cent, which is almost double the figure. Elsewhere in the annual report we find that the paramount target of 100 per cent of category 1 emergency patients being seen immediately is no longer being met. One of the issues on which the former Liberal government hung its hat was the fact that emergency patients were seen immediately, 100 per cent of the time.

I justify that statement by saying that we are still meeting the national average. The former government was exceeding the national average, but under this health minister and his predecessor we went down the gurgler. We are not getting better quality services as a result of spending more money. The government is frittering away that money on the wrong sorts of things. Money is being frittered away on people who are called bed blockers.

MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

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