Page 396 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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We have a failure of the mental health system. We have a failure of the hospital admission system. We have a failure of communications in hospitals that means that simple processes take longer than they should. There is often a breakdown of communications. When people are being discharged from hospital, it often takes them hours to get simple things like medications because of the process. There is much that is wrong and much that this minister needs to do to fix it.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (4.50): Today we have heard from those opposite their impressions of our health system in the ACT. As we heard from the minister, Mr Corbell, and Ms MacDonald, it is a health system that the ACT public can be proud of and have confidence in. I must say I am not surprised that Mrs Burke and Mr Smyth would see the article in the Canberra Times as a way to leap from Dr Richardson’s research to an accusation that the minister does not care and is happy to allow overcrowding to occur.
Mrs Burke vexatiously continues to say in this place that the research shows a causal relationship between one thing, that is, the number of people in A&E, and another, the death of individual patients. I have heard Mrs Dunne make this claim in question time, and Mrs Burke did so a few minutes ago. I am not surprised because each time the opposition discusses essential public services in this place it manages to undermine them by questioning the quality of these services.
I have observed Mrs Dunne, in her previous role as shadow minister for education, continually undermine our public education system. It is almost a joke the way the shadow minister for police, Mr Pratt, runs down emergency services. He was doing it again in question time today. I say “almost a joke”, as it is an absolutely serious matter when those opposite express a lack of faith in those whose job it is to protect us. Then, of course, we hear in this place the opposition seeking to undermine our public transport system, a public transport system that is proving on a daily basis to be more and more responsive to the public and more and more popular—
Mrs Dunne: I raise a point of order, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. The matter of public importance is the public health system. So far Ms Porter has talked about the police, the public transport system—
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, if Ms Porter has talked about—
Mrs Dunne: She has been going for two minutes.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, there is no point of order.
MS PORTER: Public transport is becoming more and more popular and, therefore, further utilised. But I digress. Today this matter of public importance is about our fine public health system. The opposition have their beady eyes on it, as they have on many of our services. I am somewhat surprised, though, that Mrs Burke, a member of the Standing Committee on Health and Disability, should undermine the public health system. What does she hope to achieve by expressing such a lack of confidence in our public health system? She surely does not think that this will assist the public.
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