Page 2681 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
record in Hansard, two days running, denying that those requests have been made. How do you correlate those two pieces of evidence? How can you say that it is not a mislead if you have got in black and white in the Hansard her saying that doctors are not being requested and you have it in black and white in two letters saying that they are being requested? How can you possibly say that we were not misled in this Assembly and the community has not been misled? It is quite clear that we have been.
I see Ms Bresnan sitting there. I have just read out those quotes. I do not understand how Ms Bresnan is going to basically say that she was not misled. I really cannot understand that. She may have some sympathy for the minister and the problem around elective surgery lists. But, ultimately, were we misled or were we not misled? That is the fundamental question. That is what this boils down to, and in black and white, in the Hansard, we have, and I will read that again:
… I can absolutely say that this is not the case.
And the surgeon wrote:
Many surgeons resist or refuse requests to downgrade the category …
It is in black and white.
Mr Stanhope, in his normal style, tried to turn this motion that is directed solely at the minister to say, “This is simply the Liberals attacking doctors or attacking public servants.” So let me say for the record that that is absolutely, categorically, not the case. We have the greatest sympathy for the doctors who find themselves in an impossible position, because if you are a doctor in this town and you do not classify your patient as urgent it is quite likely that that patient will not get surgery for more than a year.
We saw that in the case of Allan McFarlane. He is a patient who should have had his surgery within 60 days. And what happened? Over a year later he was still waiting on that list. Imagine if you were a surgeon, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you had some doubt as to whether a patient should be urgent or you could potentially classify them as semi-urgent, and you knew that the consequence of that decision could be that your patient would not get surgery for over a year. Can you blame those surgeons, being put in such an impossible position, for erring occasionally on the side of putting a patient on the urgent list? I would not blame them for doing so, because the consequence of not doing is that their patients wait over a year. And that is disgraceful.
A couple of things have come out of this debate today. The minister has mismanaged our health system, she has mismanaged our elective surgery lists, she has misled this Assembly, she deserves to be censured, and I encourage all members in this place to do that.
Question put:
That Mr Hanson’s motion be agreed to.
The Assembly voted—
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video