Page 3904 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
We already have the lowest number of GPs in the country, the lowest number of bulk-billing GPs in the country, and what we hear from the government is very little in response. The minister has essentially washed her hands of it. She said that she is not responsible; it is a business decision; there is nothing she can do. What we see here from the Minister for Health is the minister not responsible for anything. When it comes to GPs, she has washed her hands of them.
The government’s piece of media spin that they put out on that day was that they were going to advertise in a magazine for overseas doctors. That was their substantive response. When you got on the ACT Health website, the live-in-Canberra website, you are taken to the Division of GPs’ website and trying to find any information about any support that the ACT government was going to be providing to GPs was impossible to find.
You will see reported this week that a doctor that came from Germany, who has had immense trouble coming from Germany to settle as a GP in Canberra, was provided little, if any, support by the ACT government to ease his transition from Germany to Canberra. There is so much that could have been done by the ACT government to help him out with the reams of paperwork and that was not done.
The minister is the minister not responsible for GPs. She certainly does not seem to have any plan or take account of or responsibility for the elective surgery rates that we have in this town. We have the lowest rate, the longest waiting time for elective surgery in the nation. So you will wait longer for your elective surgery procedures in the ACT than anywhere else. In emergency departments, you will wait longer than any body in—
Mr Seselja: New South Wales Labor is doing better in health.
MR HANSON: Frightening thought, is it not? In emergency departments, you will wait longer in the ACT than anywhere else. When is the minister actually going to start saying, “Yes, I am responsible”? The Stanhope-Gallagher Labor government have been in power for eight years. This is not something that happened overnight. “We have been in power for eight years. This has happened on our watch. This has not happened overnight. We inherited a very good health system and we have started to run it into the ground.”
The only reason that we are actually doing anything in this town about GPs is twofold. One is the community outrage over the incessant GP closures and the impossibility of finding a new GP in this town. The second is the pressure that we have applied collectively in this Assembly, led by the opposition with a motion that was put to the Assembly a number of months ago.
Meanwhile, what do hear from the minister? Nothing substantive this week on health! But what we heard was a dissertation on the government’s wonderful record on capital works in the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Seselja: Including the prison.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .