Page 2364 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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MR SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope!
Mr Stanhope: I withdraw the word “mislead”, but he is definitely misinterpreting the letter and doing it quite deliberately.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope, thank you. Resume your seat.
Mrs Dunne: No, he has to withdraw, and he cannot substitute other words.
MR SPEAKER: He did withdraw.
MR HANSON: Mr Speaker, can I make the point that both Mr Smyth and I were warned today during question time for fewer interjections and, I would say, less controversial interjections. If the Chief Minister does continue, I would ask that he be warned in accordance with the way that Mr Smyth and I were.
Mr Stanhope: Little petal. Time to go home.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, members, that is enough. Let us hear Mr Hanson.
MR HANSON: The minister said in this place yesterday, with regard to why patients were being downgraded, that it was based on their clinical assessment. What we are seeing is doctors being put in a position where they are downgrading patients to category 2 simply as a result of the fact that the date that they are going to be operated on exceeds the 30-day limit.
What we have seen tonight, I think, is a real problem of competence of this government and a consequence of that is that patients are waiting exceptionally long times for elective surgery in the ACT—twice the national average.
Mr Stanhope: Rubbish.
MR HANSON: The Chief Minister is interjecting. He invites me to look at the statistics. I was going to conclude. If he wants me to read them out, I will. But he says that they are rubbish. I will tell you that you are—
Mr Stanhope: No, I wasn’t referring to statistics as rubbish. I was referring to you as rubbish.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stanhope! Mr Stanhope, let him finish.
MR HANSON: The median wait for elective surgery is more than twice as long, 31 days longer, as the national average, which is 34 days. If you are at the 90th percentile, which is the majority of patients, you wait 378 days, which is 158 days longer than the national average. And 10.6 per cent of patients have been waiting over a year. That is, in fact, three times more than the national average. All of those three statistics have deteriorated since the same report was released last year. If Mr Stanhope says that it is rubbish—
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