Page 1883 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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program was launched, we got onto a web site and found a report from a nurse who was involved in the process. Initially, they did the right thing. They said to the staff, “How do we fix this problem?” The staff put forward numerous solutions. My understanding is that the morale in the emergency department actually went up because the staff there said, “At last they are looking at us.”
One of the comments on the web was “Gee, I hope I am not putting the mocker on this by mentioning it, but I will believe it when I see it.” That individual came back and said, “Yes, I knew it, they blew it,” because they did not take on board the suggestions of the staff. They watered them down, they modified them, they changed them and they twisted them, and the result we got was that we went from bypass in May 2005 of a total of 10 hours to bypass in May 2006 of 36 hours, a 360 percent increase. That is absolutely appalling, and that is why money is not the solution.
Mr Gentleman can get up here and read speeches like a glove puppet any time he wants, but he has to confront the reality of the situation; it is not working. Minister, it is now over to you. The minister said during the call of the previous vote that she is going to explain how the references to a $41 million increase and a $61 million increase to health funding can both be right. If that is new maths, I am glad you are not the education minister any longer, because 41 does not equal 61 in anybody’s figures. The sum is $61 million in the book. I do not know where the $41 million comes from. It is the same as saying that we are going to lose 82 heads. Off with their heads! They will sit and will knit while the guillotine falls on 82 staff, but they are going to improve the staff numbers at the same time. That does not work, and you are not fooling anyone. The problem is that we are not making the situation better.
What this motion does, and it is interesting that it comes in the aftermath of the 2006-07 budget, is that it looks at the latest indicators of what is wrong with the system. We have the recent report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, we have the figures for bypass and we have figures for elective surgery in the ACT. We are calling on the ACT government to take urgent and appropriate action to improve the performance of the ACT public hospital system, look after Canberrans when they get ill, and look after the staff to make sure that we do not keep bleeding our trained nurses and our trained doctors into other occupations because they do not work in an organisation that does not let them excel. They used to excel. We used to have the best system in the country. We used to have shorter waiting lists, we used to have shorter waiting times, but the last five years, three ministers and millions of dollars of money have simply made the position worse.
I have discussed the number of instances in the budget where the numbers just do not add up. Another reflection on the health system is that the government has had to make up for $11 million in lost revenue. It is cutely described as revised revenue adjustments. If that is not tautology, I do not know what is. But why is it, minister, that you are going to underachieve in your revenue targets for the next couple of years? It is quite interesting that, due to revised revenue adjustments, the figure is down $10,865,000 in the coming year, $14 million the year after that, $18 million the year after that, and $21 million the year after that. Why isn’t the hospital performing? Why isn’t the hospital able to earn this revenue? It is because it is not being run effectively. As a consequence, we are putting more money in to cover what should have been made from a perfectly
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