Page 3339 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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administration that goes with that.” Let us face it: public hospitals are large institutions that need to be managed on a full-time basis. Do you want your doctors and nurses caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of administration of a public hospital or do you want the doctors on the front line delivering the services?
We do not want to see another layer of bureaucracy imposed on our public hospital system. We do not want to see that level of cumbersome, confusing bureaucracy placed onto our public hospital systems. We want to continue to improve services for the Canberra community. As the health minister has said, we report comprehensively and openly on these issues. There is a quarterly report that reviews the performance of every part of the public and community health system, not just elective surgery or waiting times in the emergency department, but the performance of this system overall against long-term benchmarks. They are not short-term measures but long-term benchmarks. We report on those openly and accountably every quarter.
The government has reviewed closely the opposition’s proposals in relation to this inquiry. What is extraordinary about this inquiry is that in no way does it indicate how the opposition will improve the delivery of public health services. They have had six years in opposition to deliver a coherent alternative to what is a significant public policy challenge in any democracy—the delivery of quality, safe and accessible public health care. What have they done during that time? What alternative have they presented? They have presented no alternative in terms of policy except to establish another committee. That is the Liberal Party’s solution—another committee.
Mrs Burke: No. It is about scrutiny. It is about accountability. It is about holding you to account. You know that.
MR CORBELL: I look forward to hearing the argument from Mrs Burke about why another committee will help improve the management of our public hospital system.
Mrs Burke: Because we will get to the bottom of the problems that are being currently covered up. That is why.
MR CORBELL: We will continue as a government to make the investment.
Mrs Burke: You know those things are being covered up.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Burke.
MR CORBELL: We will deliver the actions that will help improve the delivery of our public hospital systems. We are not interested in committees that simply add another layer of bureaucracy. We are not interested in boards that will further confuse accountability. We are interested in action on the ground.
We have improved the level of capacity in our public hospital system by an extra 143 beds. We have delivered record levels of elective surgery. Bed block and access block in the emergency department are at a five-year low. We are improving off-stretcher times in our public hospitals so that people are not waiting in the ambulance to get into the emergency department. The incidence of that is going down. Those indicators are there, they are concrete and they cannot be disputed.
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