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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2327 ..

Mr Speaker, the average number of patients treated each month under the current government is now 658—658 patients a month. Under the previous government the average was 704. It’s dropped by 6½ per cent. For all the reform and all the extra money that this government has thrown into the hospital system, what they’ve done is made it worse; and appreciably so.

Mr Speaker, this minister is not addressing hospital waiting lists, even though he said it was his No 1 priority. But worse than that: we’re not even keeping up with what was done under the previous government. Under the last Liberal budget, 2001-02, the outcome for the year was 14,168 cost-weighted separations; that is, 14,168 cost-weighted separations was the measure. Last year, in 2002-03, it was 12,265; and this year to date it’s only 10,856. The hospital system is in strife, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (4.21): Mr Speaker, the ACT community has access to one of the finest public hospital systems in the world. Public hospitals provide over 60,000 inpatient episodes in a year, and well over 200,000 outpatient episodes. This year, our emergency departments will treat almost 100,000 people. Everyone who uses Canberra’s public hospitals can be assured that they will have access to high-quality care, using the latest procedures, pharmaceuticals and equipment. Yes, Mr Speaker, there are pressure points in our public hospitals. But overall our community continues to receive high-quality public hospital services that are second to none in Australia.

Highlighting issues where we can improve systems is always welcome. However, Mr Smyth continues to scaremonger and create confusion within the community about the level of access to public hospital care. No-one in need of emergency care is turned away from our public hospitals, despite what Mr Smyth says. No-one in need of urgent elective surgery is made to wait too long for that surgery, despite what Mr Smyth says. Yes, there are ongoing issues with elective surgery and emergency department services. But the government is working hard to fix it. Yes, there are issues with bed numbers in ACT public hospitals, but we are actively working to significantly improve that situation.

Let’s start with elective surgery. I’ve explained this to Mr Smyth so many times already, but he seems to refuse to listen. The previous ACT government funded additional elective surgery with time-limited funds provided by the Commonwealth as part of an incentive for signing up early to the previous Australian health care agreement. These funds ran out in the 2001-02 financial year. The government that Mr Smyth was part of did not make an allowance for the continuation of this additional funding in its last budget. ACT Labor was left with the problem—a problem that we’ve fixed.

Some facts to prove this, Mr Speaker: Labor is on track to provide more public elective surgery procedures this year than in any other year on record. We will more than meet our promise of an additional 600 elective surgery operations, and the elective surgery initiatives announced over the last two ACT Labor budgets will provide almost $20 million extra in additional elective procedures over the next four years. That’s almost 4,000 more operations than would have been available with the health budget left to us by Mr Smyth and his colleagues.

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