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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3528 ..

The Acting Minister for Health, who said that there is no such thing as an internal disaster mode, knows what is meant by that phrase. On Tuesday he fobbed us off by giving us a list of external disasters and stating that the government had in place external disaster plans, which is appropriate. However, hospital staff are referring to internal disasters or, to use the term that has been used in New South Wales, code black. What will happen when we go to code black? We asked the Acting Minister for Health what would happen if both hospitals went on bypass and he said, “That can never happen because the hospitals will keep accepting patients. If one hospital goes on bypass the other hospital cannot.”

We are not informed when hospitals go on bypass. We could have both hospitals on bypass and they would not be admitting patients; those patients would be sitting in ambulances in the forecourts of Canberra’s hospitals. That is bypass. Patients cannot get into emergency rooms because there is no room; they are left sitting in ambulances. We do not send those patients to other hospitals because they are full and already on bypass, so we leave them sitting in ambulances in the forecourt of Canberra Hospital while we call in relief staff and ambulances from Queanbeyan and Yass.

What a litany of failures. The real failure is the attitude of the government when it states that the hospitals are busy. Of course they are busy. Patients go to hospitals only when they need them; they do not go there for pleasure or for fun. We have not had from this government any indication as to how it will fix this problem now or in the lead-up to the next election.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage, and Acting Minister for Health) (3.48): Mr Smyth commenced his contribution by referring to a litany of headlines. In question time I referred to a couple of headlines and pointed out how the newspapers had referred to patients having been plugged into hospital storage rooms and the like. I could spend the 15 minutes that are available to me running through a number of headlines. I refer, for example to a headline in July 2001 that states, “Canberra patients waiting too long.” Another headline on 26 May 2001 states, “Hospital chaos, nurses off sick.”

I will go through a few more headlines, though I have more than I could ever get through, that establish there has been a litany of headlines. On 5 April 2001 another headline states, “Patient flood pushes hospital to edge.” I wonder which government was in office in the years that I have mentioned. Another headline states, “Nurses take measure of anger to Assembly.” Mr Smyth claimed earlier that nurses had made clear their attitude in relation to this government, yet they took that measure of anger to the former Liberal government. Other headlines read, “Elderly without access to proper care”, “No bed available for appendicitis patient”, and, “Probe into hospital crisis.”

Mr Smyth said that there was a litany of headlines. There was a litany of headlines in the time of the former government. Mr Smyth wants us to forget the record of the former government but he overlooks the massive amount of work that has been done by this government to improve hospital services at a time when demand is continuing to grow. I welcome the comments of opposition members on health issues, but I do not welcome them when they are not constructive or when they are so overblown that they are

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