Page 481 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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about a range of different issues, but that is the one that consistently comes up as number one.
The motion I have submitted today welcomes the announcement to consider overhauling the hospitals. It does not lend support or opposition to any specific measure proposed by the government. I look forward to being able to welcome new proposals and plans after considering their merits when full details are made available to the Assembly. The broad welcome of an announcement to consider the overhaul of the system should allow members of this Assembly to support the motion even if they have reservations about particular proposals or different ideas on what should be done. We should at least be able to agree with one another that something must be done to improve the state of Canberra’s health system.
The motion also calls on the government to provide the Assembly with a timetable for implementation for these changes as soon as possible. I know from a recent briefing with ACT Health officials that the hospital is reaching a point where we have almost run out of room to expand using existing space and resources. Before too long, it will be impossible to reclaim more beds. I thank the minister and the officials of the department for making that briefing available. The information that was provided by the director of public health and his officials and advisers from the minister’s office was very productive. If it has not happened already, I would urge the opposition and Dr Foskey to seek a briefing on where things are going, particularly in areas of capacity. When you are armed with the sort of information that was presented to me, it helps temper ill-considered initiatives and proposals, because certain things are not practical within the constraints of the current system. And it helps one understand the direction ACT Health plans to go in to meet the needs of the growing population.
We need—and I cannot stress this enough—a change or new program to serve the ACT into the future. A major feature of the government’s announcement of changes to ACT public hospitals has been its focus on the growing pressure on hospitals due to an ageing population. In discussions on this matter, we have heard many figures cited about the future demography of the ACT and what this will mean for an ACT public hospital system that is already in serious trouble. As I have probably said previously here, when I call on residents, door-knocking in the suburbs of Canberra, I meet people who look to be in good physical health and who tell me they are in good physical health but who are very apprehensive about circumstances arising where they may need to use the system for various levels of care. The stories of delays and the like cause people to become very anxious.
We need to accept the fact that with an ageing population it is going to cost a lot more money to run this system. We need to be planning well ahead—I am told by the department they are—and ensuring that the people of Canberra can consider the health system with a measure of confidence. We need to take the health system off the position of being the number one area of concern in this community.
It is important that we are able to compare these projections in terms of future demands with the timetables for changes to ACT hospitals, to ensure that we will end up with a system that is able to cope with the higher level of patients we expect in the future. This is also important from a budgetary perspective, as an overhaul of the
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