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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3525 ..

does not facilitate it. So those patients are left languishing inappropriately in acute beds, which is causing bed block.

We have headlines relating to things such as the government’s attempt to close the rehabilitation independent living unit, the jewel in the crown of rehabilitation in the ACT, for some short-term gain. We have some disastrous headlines relating to what nursing staff call internal disaster mode, which the government claims does not exist. Its equivalent in New South Wales is called code black but the government blithely ignores that. For the first time in memory, the number of people on Calvary Hospital’s waiting lists has gone over 2,000. Average throughput in the public hospital system is down because of the government’s decision to cut Calvary Hospital’s health budget by $3.5 million in its first full-year budget.

On top of that we are using our ambulances as hospital beds. Ambulances cannot unload their patients into areas of appropriate care that they need and deserve, as emergency rooms, the gurneys in corridors, storerooms and hospital wards are full. The government says, “It is business as usual. It is not as bad as the rest of the country. It is commonplace elsewhere.” Who cares what happens elsewhere? Those in this place are charged with the governance and the budget of the ACT. Until the Stanhope Labor government came into office it was never commonplace; it rarely happened in the ACT. These are new instances of mismanagement by this government of the public hospital system.

Ambulances are routinely used as de facto hospital beds—a situation denied by the former health minister. I quote a statement in Hansard on 26 May by Dr Sherbon, the head of ACT Health, at the estimates committee hearings. He said, “This is most unusual in the territory.” Today we found out that that has happened 10 or 11 times in the past 12 months. Apparently it is most unusual, but I would say that it is becoming way too common. The situation is so dire in the ACT public hospital system that we have had to use ambulances from Queanbeyan. I am also reliably informed that we might have borrowed ambulances from Yass. The minister, in his press release, states:

Smyth’s irresponsible scaremongering on ambulances. Everything is okay.

The minister is quoted on the ABC website as stating:

We're looking and we are improving the services within the emergency services department of the hospital generally, we're also looking at the need for a further ambulance ...

The minister said that I was scaremongering as I said that ACT ambulances were not responding. Rightly so, arrangements are in place so that we can call on other organisations across the border when ambulances are needed. We have now received confirmation that the minister is politicising this issue. The minister is not paying attention. He is saying, “Yes, we do have a problem. We are considering getting four additional ambulances.” This morning on the radio a Transport Workers Union representative admitted that the TWU has been after an additional ambulance for some years now but the government has ignored it.

When will the government wake up and address the problems in the health area? Mr Wood blathers on the radio about how the health budget is increasing. According to

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