Page 1515 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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ACT. And where do people choose to go? They choose to go to the public system, because they know that it is access to very high quality, patient-centred care. That is reflected in this report. We are well above the national average per head of population for usage of the public hospital system. People do it because it is good quality—it is high quality—and they know that the treatment they will get there is excellent.
I will not agree with Mrs Burke when she says that there are substandard health outcomes. That is not reflected in this report. In fact, I would challenge you to find where the adverse health outcomes are outlined in this report. I think—
Mrs Burke: When did I say that?
MS GALLAGHER: I have written it down as a quote from you. I get quite protective of that because, in terms of patient outcomes, our hospital delivers every single day. We have fantastic patient outcomes, and that is directly attributable to the high quality of our health professional staff that work in those areas.
We have an effective and increasingly efficient public hospital system that people are proud of. Sure, there are areas to continue to focus on, and they have been highlighted in this report. They will be, and are being, attended to by government. But I will not accept that the public system is a system of well-documented woes. I will not have it run down. I will not have its reputation run down when that is not—
Mrs Burke: You had better tell your staff that.
MS GALLAGHER: I am talking about the system, because you—
Mrs Burke: Tell the doctors, the nurses and the people who are on the front line.
MS GALLAGHER: There was a differentiation between the staff and the system at the beginning of Mrs Burke’s address. I will not have the system run down. The system is excellent. If you are going to get sick, the ACT is a great place to get sick. You will get treated very well, and your treatment—and that is documented in the report—will be very effective and very efficient.
We cannot have it both ways from the opposition. This morning, we heard the shadow Treasurer say that the balance sheet was not as strong as we were alleging—that we were delivering one surplus year and then a number of deficits. He went on to say that health was over-funded; then he went on to say that demand for health services was not being met. You cannot—
Mrs Burke: You are twisting words, Katy.
MS GALLAGHER: No, that is what he says: $61 million more for this hospital system than other—
Mr Smyth: He did not use the word “overfunded”.
MS GALLAGHER: He added it up on his little slide—$61 million more. That almost takes all the initiatives from this year and into the forwards. I wonder which
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