Page 1044 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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finally did happen, apparently there were some complications with that. Six times—where is the quality in his life there? That is just dreadful. That is a real problem.
Of course only a few weeks ago we had the fellow who turned up with his sleeping bag at A&E—a very practical man; he certainly was going to spend a lot of time there. I hear they are calling him “sleeping bag”. There are a lot of people out there calling the minister “sleeping bag Simon”. The time it actually takes to fix up people in A&E is really quite disturbing. It is now, on average, eight hours. I think it has been eight hours or so since 2003.
I just jotted down a few notes here, while I was listening to the minister, in terms of my personal experience in relation to people going to A&E. It invariably was around about two hours until and including 1999. I know that from having young kids and from coaching a number of football teams and taking injured players there. There were a couple of incidents in 1989, with injured players: two hours. That was on a Saturday. In 1992, on a Thursday, after training, I took a big fellow called Falamani Mafi there. He was playing in the second row for me. He had a dislocated finger: two hours. I took my little girl to hospital mid-week in 1999: 2½ hours. In 2003, on a couple of occasions, I had players go to hospital: eight hours on each occasion.
Compare that even with a basic hospital. I had experience at Wollongong Hospital over the Christmas break, again with my little girl who was transferred from Bulli to the Wollongong Hospital. She was seen in virtually next to no time and actually was put in overnight for some tests and observations. If they can do it, why can’t we?
I have mentioned before in this place but it bears repeating because this is also unconscionable—and I am not blaming the doctors or nurses; they work under extreme difficulties as a result of, I think, the incompetence of this government—that, at Easter last year, an 85-year-old woman from Holder fell over and broke her arm. Friday, at 9.00 pm, Easter, in she goes. She was finally, I think, treated on the Tuesday and discharged at about 3.30. She was kept there; she was not able, of course, to go home, with an injury like that. She was pretty discouraged about the whole thing. She said; “At least the bruising has gone down.” But 3¾ days for an elderly woman to be seen and treated for a broken arm indicates a very, very real problem in our health system. And at the end of the day, the buck stops with the minister.
Mr Speaker, the nurses, the staff, the doctors do work very long hours there. I regularly hear of nurses doing double shifts, being called on to come back and do a double shift or come in on their days off, simply to keep the system ticking over. It is very draining and very hard for anyone who is working 14 or 15 hours to really be able to focus on the job, despite the dedication these people actually show to the job. Similarly, of course, doctors often work equally lengthy periods of time. The ones I have spoken to have some real concerns about the system and just the pressure it is actually placing on staff.
That is, I think, very much an indictment of the minister, as are the elective surgery waiting lists. As we have shown, the numbers of people going onto them are actually slightly decreasing; they are not rising. If they were rising, it might be a good reason, but they are slightly decreasing. The number of people on the elective surgery waiting lists is now—congratulations, minister—I understand, a record 5,035 people. What on earth are you doing in relation to our health system? It is a significant problem indeed.
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