Page 2404 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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You are opening yourself up to enormous medical liabilities, but we are not making sure that we are keeping the population of the ACT fit and healthy as long as we can and out of the system. We do not have appropriate chronic illness management systems. I do not believe that we are engaging well enough with the GP system. The GPs and the pharmacy system are the first port of call. They are there; they are willing to help. They feel left out of the system. What we do not have is the motivation to make it work.
The only answer we ever get from the government on this is, “We put lots of money in the system.” The money is welcome—even though the government is now reducing the rate of growth of the money, and it will be interesting to see how they cope with that. I think everybody would always say that extra money in the health system is welcome as long as it is achieving a result. The constant attack—particularly on me, and I look forward to the minister possibly repeating it again today—is, “We’ve put more money than you did into mental health.” If you have put more money into mental health, where are the results? The results are not on the ground. Money is not the answer; it is about getting the systems right and making sure that the approach is right. That is the failing in this government. It has failed in the last five or six budgets; it fails in this one.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (11.43): Mr Speaker, I will take my second allocation of time. Following on from Mr Smyth’s comments, I want to speak very briefly. I want to provide the health minister with some more information to help her—by way of some direct quotes from nurses and family members. The first is:
It’s about time people were made aware of how far behind the rest of Australia and the world our Canberra Hospital really is.
Remember that this is public perception. It is not me; this is a quote from somebody. Again I quote:
My wife is a—
and I have deleted the department—
nurse at the Canberra Hospital. I have listened to her stories for many years of staff frustrations with poor hospital management, of the chronic shortage of nursing staff and indeed high level skills and of the general “public service” malaise that seems to be rife through senior management levels in the hospital.
Mr Smyth rightly says—and the ANF have said it as well—that there are senior people, trained people, ready and willing to come back—but not willing and able to come back into a system such as we find ourselves in today.
Another quote:
She and other staff complain bitterly that media beat-ups over “bed shortages” are nothing more than a smokescreen for an acute lack of staff for the manning of wards and operating theatres.”
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