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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 498 ..

I will just pick out a few here—

• Visiting specialist doctor costs at $261 per treatment were 128.9% higher than the national average (the highest in Australia);

• Administration costs at $281 per treatment were 65.3% higher than the national average (the highest in Australia);

• Administrative labour costs at $259 per treatment were 16.1% higher than the national average (the highest in Australia);

And so it goes on. People can read the facts for themselves. This problem is happening now.

We can clearly see the tactics of this government—lazy. I have several comments and quotes from the Chief Minister, from Mr Wood, from Ms Gallagher and from their colleague in Queensland Mr Beattie that all use the same tactics, which are very clever. They say how appalling and how terrible things are et cetera, et cetera and ask how the opposition can blame our workers, our public servants, our people on the ground. They then say that they have done X to fix—or bandaid—the problem. And the fourth point that they clearly use is, “The former government must take responsibility.”

Mr Speaker, I put it to you: how can this government, who were in opposition for six years touting that they were going to be the best government of all time, now, 27 months down the track, stand up and say, “We still have not got it right, but we’re working on it, people; we will have another review.” It is not good enough.

MR SPEAKER: It is not open to me to give an answer to that question. I would like to.

MRS BURKE: Come on, Mr Speaker, please. So we do see that the problems in our public hospitals are happening now—and it is on this government’s watch. It is no good for the government to continue to carp and harp on by blaming governments of the past. Take some leadership, or show some leadership. Take some responsibility. Fess up to it, take it on the chin and fix the problem.

MR STEFANIAK (4.31): Mr Smyth spoke earlier about a bed block in the Canberra hospital and about the nurses website. Let me continue.

This blockage results in the patients ‘bedspace’ effectively becoming an inpatient space that is unable to be utilized for the assessment and management of new patients presenting to the ED. It is no longer a functioning unit of the emergency department but rather it is a ward bed in the emergency department.

These patients (aka people) however, are often acutely ill, requiring considerable nursing resources to manage their needs.

So, as access block multiplies during the day, the ED transmogrifies. The functional emergency department shrinks to be replaced by a growing acute care ward.

We recently had a situation where there were so many people ‘parked’ in the ED awaiting bed allocation on the wards that we only had a few beds available to treat

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