Page 3328 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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who have an urgent need for medical care wait for hours and hours—which sticks infectious patients in a corner of a public ward while hiving off around 30 single rooms for administrators offices, and which does not even necessarily provide a clean and hygienic environment—would be criticised by my colleague the shadow minister for health.
This is a government that does not have any interest in being accountable. This is not a health minister who is working strenuously to address these serious issues. Indeed, the issues are being denied. All we ever have from the government is buck passing and whingeing. It is usually about the commonwealth. The government is never responsible for the system that it manages here in the ACT—just like every other state government and the Northern Territory managing a health system.
This is why we need an inquiry into the parlous state of the public hospital system in the ACT. The system has been run down by the Stanhope government despite record levels of funding. The health budget is $700 million, a fact often trumpeted by the ACT government. This year the ACT government will get $823 million in GST from the commonwealth government to spend as it sees fit. Even the Chief Minister has conceded that the issue is not funding but management of the public hospital system. Let me quote Mr Stanhope’s words from 9 October on ABC radio: “There are clinical issues and staffing and systemic issues that we need to address, investigate closely. We need to ensure that when mistakes are made we own up to them in full and we seek to redress.”
They are fine words indeed. There are a growing number of external studies which show just how poorly the ACT is doing in public health care. In August a report by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine found that the ACT’s hospital emergency departments have more patients and longer admission waiting times than three years ago. According to The state of our public hospitals, a report from the federal Department of Health and Ageing in June 2007, the ACT performed poorly, rating equal last in Australia for public hospital beds per 1,000 weighted population, second last for the percentage of patients seen within the recommended time—70 per cent—last for the percentage of admissions that waited longer than one year for elective surgery, and last for the median waiting time in the emergency department. The AMA has issued a damning scorecard. In July we heard the Australian Nursing Federation ACT Branch warning about the pressures on nursing staff and the possibility that care could be compromised, despite the very best efforts of our hardworking nurses.
Yet according to this government, this Chief Minister and this health minister, everything is rosy. We have a “fantastic health system”, to quote the Chief Minister. According to Mr Corbell, the acting health minister several weeks ago, speaking after the death of Mr Osterberg, Canberra cannot expect a system that is fail-safe. What sort of attitude is that—to admit a margin of failure before you even start?
We are calling for an inquiry under the Inquiries Act. The government, when in opposition, was very keen to see the same occur in relation to disability services. Back in 2000, Mr Stanhope, as opposition leader, would not have countenanced such a blase, hit-and-miss sort of attitude to the provision of services which go to the life and death of people in our community.
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