Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2938 ..

figures are derived from. I can tell you now, Mr Speaker, that none of those opposite will stand and tell us where the national standard on bypassing is from, because one just does not exist.

I would be delighted to have somebody over there prove me wrong, but in my research to this stage I have not been able to discover one. The minister put it on the table. He answered a question on it in the negative; he said that he did not invent it. Obviously, it exists. Perhaps the government could tell us where the standard is from. We will continue to pursue that.

What did we find out this week, Mr Speaker? We found out that elective surgery overdues are way up on the position three years ago. The elective surgery waiting list itself is up 20 per cent on the position three years ago. Almost 40 per cent of the people on it are now overdue and costs are around 30 per cent higher than the national average. The ACT system always will be more expensive to run. We were normally outdone by the Northern Territory, which had huge geographic considerations that added to its costs, but we have even managed to pip the Northern Territory at the post in regard to health care.

We have the scandalous proposal to close RILU, the rehabilitation independent living unit at the hospital. Of course, the Assembly directed the minister last week not to close it. We have had the failure of successive ministers to build a transitional care facility. Three years after it was first proposed, a brick still has not been laid. In fact, there is not even a plan yet and it will be at least another two years before the transitional care facility appears, which will mean that it will have taken five years to build it. The delay is adding every day to the bed block that is causing many problems at the hospital.

The 2004-05 budget is incredibly weak on mental health issues, particularly on new initiatives. The reason for that, as we found out in the estimates process, is that it was all funded last year before the public consultation on the mental health action plan, before the final plan was released, before the plan was costed, and before the plan appeared with no targets and no time lines, or very weak ones if there was any indication of a target or a time line. I have never heard of such an extraordinary excuse—the money was in the budget last year—for not having enough money in the budget this year to fund an initiative such as the mental health action plan that was actually put out this year.

Mr Speaker, if this budget is to be believed, after three years our public hospital system will provide about five per cent more in inpatient services this year than it did two years ago and around 13 per cent more in services than did the last budget of the former government. I say “if” because the figures show that for the first two years of this government’s administration the result did not meet the expectations of the budget. One has only to refer to the AIHW report this year in terms of meeting emergency room timings. As members would know, there are five categories—resuscitation, emergency, urgent, semi-urgent, and non-urgent—and they have standards to be met within certain times.

The government is spruiking that it has achieved the best result, but it is the best result of a very poor batch and it actually shows a decline across previous years. If we run across the various categories in terms of resuscitation we find that four of the eight jurisdictions got 100 per cent. You would want to be able to meet 100 per cent if the patient requires

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .