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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4369 ..

will not go on bypass. Well, they do not. That is because we stack ambulances in the forecourt of the hospital as mobile hospital wards. It is the issue of bed block that I think is synonymous during the last three years with the progress of the mismanagement of the health portfolio. We have to look at beds.

Let’s look at the step-down facility. The government in the lead-up to the last election promised the step-down facility. We also promised a step-down facility and set the wheels in motion for it to happen. We promised it in March; money was in the budget in 2001. We are now in 2004. Do we have a step down facility? No, we do not.

The government promised to develop such a facility in the lead-up to the 2001 election. We have still got bed block and we do not have a step-down facility. We know, because we have asked at the last couple of estimates hearings how many patients at any one time contribute to bed block in the two public hospitals, and the consistent answer is somewhere between, say, 24 and 36. The number has not changed in over three years—extremely valuable beds that are not being used appropriately either in the context of management of our hospitals or in the context of managing the nursing home type patients.

We should have a sub-acute facility by now to provide alternative accommodation options for these patients as, first, they leave hospital or, secondly, they prepare to go either home or into other accommodation. The delay on this important project is a damning indictment of this government. Moreover, the delay has now led to the proposed facility having doubled in cost. The minister will get up and say that there are extra beds and extra facilities being provided. That is true, but it should have been built by now. What we have from this government is a glacial approach to the capital works program that the Auditor-General has commented on in two of his most recent reports over the last two years.

Where are we with it? Is there a plan? No. Is there a DA? No. Is there any construction? No, there is not. When will the sub-acute facility that was first mooted in March 2001 be finally opened? Hopefully, February 2006. We get to the stage where bed block becomes such an issue that this government even attempts to shut down RILU which has been described as the jewel in the crown of ACT rehabilitation. The government is in desperate straits; the health minister is off on leave; and the acting health minister is not interested because he is going off on superannuation, so he flicks it to the head of the department and says, “Give us an answer in three weeks.”

Why did it take all the pressure from the community and the opposition and all the reports that have mounted up over the past three years—why did it take until the last three weeks of the Assembly sittings for the government to say we should do something? That will be to their eternal shame.

What is worse is the fact that they are so bereft of options to fix this problem that it is summarised in eight slides that were presented to clinicians on Monday, 23 August. The first of the slides says that there is some chance of bed block—and we all know about bed block; it is well reported in the Canberra Times—hundreds and hundreds of souls in both Calvary and Canberra hospitals waiting often for more than eight hours. We can see the growth of bed block, particularly in the Canberra Hospital. You cannot see the chart, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, but the trend line is up, up, up.

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