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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4379 ..

fact of the matter remains, of course, that Calvary Hospital has been held up by the planning process for at least two years, maybe three. That inevitably must slow their own processes. So it is quite unreasonable to blame Calvary now for the delays that have been occasioned by the planning authority and therefore by this government.

Equally so, you can argue, yes, there will always be in the order of 200 beds or more not yet operational at any one time because of the reasons outlined by the Chief Minister in his statement. It takes you two years to build the beds. That is fine, provided, of course, that you have kept up with the provision of beds over those two years. If you falter, as this government has faltered, then you will fall behind; hence we do not have 40 per cent, the Australian average of beds, coming on line, in the ACT; we have 18 per cent. You have got 209 to go, and I sincerely hope that you get your skates on, because it will take at least another two, if not three, years before they become operational.

MS DUNDAS (6.00): From my records, this is the ninth MPI we have done on health or aged care in the last 12 months. Whilst I recognise that health is a very important matter to the community and to us here in the Assembly, the fact that we have had nine MPIs on this matter in the last 12 months and that nothing has changed seems to indicate that maybe this is not the right way of approaching this particular topic.

We have all put our views on the record as to what needs to be done in relation to the health portfolio and to the health care system. We have had the discussions, but perhaps we should have looked more at this as a motion or found some other way of trying to move this debate forward, as opposed to a circular debate where we just put issues out there and have the debate but do not necessarily see anything move. That being said, given this opportunity, we should again put out the issues that we think need to be addressed. Hopefully that will see the government move and work on a number of issues.

The context of this debate today is marked by the information contained in the State of the ACT health system report that the ACT government has sent to householders in the territory. In looking through it and from perusing past budgets, I agree that we have seen the biggest ever health budget—a lot of money is being targeted towards health—yet I am concerned that only a minimal amount of this spending is being targeted towards preventative health, and measures to stop our hospitals becoming clogged in the first place.

Waiting times and overcrowding grab the headlines—they are the issues that make the stories—and the government is looking proactive by trying to find solutions to these problems. However, it would be more cost effective to make sure that people do not end up in emergency departments in the first place. It would cost the government far less money to provide assistance to our GPs, rather than having people continually turning up at the emergency departments. It would be far more efficient if we put a greater focus on preventative health.

I have raised a number of questions in this place in relation to preventative health, especially in relation to sexually transmitted infections—what is going on there and how the government is working to help stem the rise of diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. We have seen an increase in these diseases, which result in ongoing health issues, in the ACT over the last few years. The campaigns need to be working and the

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