Page 2897 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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Mr Speaker, I raised the concerns of cleanliness at the hospital only this week, and it is becoming a real issue. People have called my office very concerned about it. I received just this week two calls, one from a nurse at the Canberra Hospital who told of syringes and blood bags being left on the floor for not days, not months, but years. How do they know that? Because this person placed those objects there and kept checking up on them and checking up on them, and they are still there today, as far as I know. Another nurse told me that the nurses barely had time to clean the ward—not the cleaner’s fault I would suspect—often only able to spend around 40 minutes on each room, and they are not able to mop the floors. Another caller told me of encrusted urine in a toilet that had been there for a very long time.
The government must ensure that the cleaning contractors are adhering to the terms and conditions of their contract. Taxpayers are paying good money for a service that they are clearly not getting; so somebody needs to be held to account here. It is a very serious issue and one that must be investigated as a matter or urgency. I have spoken with those cleaners. We, as a health committee, have spoken to them. We have seen the distress and pressure that they are placed under. Now, essentially it is nothing to do with the government; essentially it is nothing to do with the hospital per se. But when we are contracting services as a government, we need to make sure that those contractors are doing the right thing, do we not?
So what is Jon Stanhope doing to ensure his health minister is addressing some of these major problems within our system—and, please, no more plans. We do not need plans. You hear on talkback radio that this is a government of plans and reviews and reports. Mr Speaker, people want action. We know the problems, and we have outlined them many times today. The community is outraged and frustrated, and rightly so, and they are losing confidence. They are losing confidence in this government, right across the system and right across government, and why? We are so heavily bureaucratised; we have got more chiefs than Indians now than we ever had before. People are so far back now that they cannot see what is really going on at the grassroots level.
The community also recognises, as indeed I do, that doctors and nurses are feeling let down by the management within our hospitals and, as a consequence, devalued and demoralised, and for very good reasons. Where is their support? What is this government doing? What are you doing to support the nurses? You know they will not leave the system; you know that. You play on their goodwill to stay in a job that they do tough, day in, day out, and Mr Stefaniak mentioned about the ANF.
Mr Speaker, the government continually tries to take cover under the banner of the fact that this is happening all over the country. Well, sadly, it is, and I have no reason to doubt that it is. So given that every state and territory government is Labor controlled, does it not speak volumes about the inability of Labor to manage any health system. The other good old standby for the health minister, the acting health minister and the Chief Minister is that it is the Liberals fault. Now, come on, six years later and you still want to lay the blame on somebody else? We have talked about the Follett government, and I will not go into this in too much detail, but I know, Mr Speaker, it was at a time when you were health minister. You said—and you may want to perhaps think about these words—on 21 November 1996:
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