Page 3275 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 13 November 2007
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me that it is about management problems, and I have told the government this enough times. Whether they say I am knocking people is neither here nor there. Feedback to the opposition is that the government needs to do something about the management problems at the hospitals. It is my duty, as part of my role as a member of this Assembly, to bring the matter to this place in a public way, so that we can address the problems. Hopefully, if pressure is kept on the government and, further down the line, the department, those people doing the right thing surely will not have a problem. (Time expired.)
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo–Minister for Health, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Disability and Community Services, Minister for Women) (4.06): I thank Mrs Burke for proposing this matter of public importance. It is always good to have the opportunity not only to talk about all the wonderful things that are happening in our health system but also to acknowledge the pressures that do exist in the system and to discuss ways in which the government is working to deal with some of those pressures.
It was interesting to note a general tone-down of some of the allegations Mrs Burke has been making since she got the health portfolio. She has been making a number of claims about our costs being 24 per cent above national benchmarks. I noticed that was missing from her speech. I noticed that some of her badgering of health professionals has been toned down, so that is good. I think she is understanding some of the facts that are being given to her, having regard to all the errors she is making in her public comments around health.
I do question, though, some of her comments. I will go through those as I work through some of the positives. For instance, in relation to access block, Mrs Burke said, “Oh my goodness, it’s 30 per cent; five per cent above target.” But that target has been set because of the programs we have put in place to reduce access block. Access block is actually coming down from 41 per cent to 30 per cent, and we are heading towards our target of 25 per cent. We have not gone up from our target; we are actually heading down, which means that the processes that are in place to deal with things such as access block are actually working.
I noted the obvious comments Mrs Burke made about an individual’s experience with the hospital system. At times, I wonder why we have a coroner, a clinical review committee or a clinical privileges committee, when obviously Mrs Burke can determine the outcomes of those, long before anyone else can. I do not know why we refer deaths to the coroner when obviously deaths in the hospital are a result of management failure—these are the allegations that Mrs Burke is making. She will only make them in this place; she would never make them outside. It does call into question some of those long-established processes that we have in place to determine outcomes of investigations. In the frightening scenario of Mrs Burke as health minister, I look forward to their abolition of processes such as the clinical review committee, the clinical privileges committee and, obviously, the coronial processes. Mrs Burke, based on information, will be able to determine each and every one of them and act on what her own investigations find.
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