Page 134 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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Mr Coe to bring himself to the subject of the motion, please. It is all well and good to wander off into the nether regions sometimes, but I ask you to get closer to the subject, please.
On one other issue, let me say that there was such a cacophony of sound coming from the opposition that I remind them that the Speaker has got three warnings current. I will not be as tolerant as Mr Rattenbury, so I remind you of that. All three of you—Mr Hanson, Mrs Dunne and Mr Coe—are currently on warnings. This is a very serious debate, and some gravity might be just in order. Mr Coe.
MR COE: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Of course, the health minister sits in cabinet. As a cabinet member she would, of course, want loyalty, and she would want the respect of her colleagues, whether it be her four other cabinet colleagues, the six other government colleagues or indeed the 11 in total coalition colleagues, including herself. I wonder whether she is getting that cooperation at the moment. I wonder whether they are all talking in the same language about how they will move forward—in the words of Julia Gillard—how they will progress the health agenda and how they will implement the government agenda. Indeed, who will lead that government is something that I think is also causing a few issues up on level 2 at the moment. I wonder whether those issues are in fact distracting Ms Gallagher and other ministers from actually doing their job.
When it comes down to it, we do not expect that a health minister will be a registrar, a nurse, a doctor, a surgeon or a bureaucrat, but we do expect a minister that will oversee her department and make the tough but necessary decisions to ensure that each member of the department is empowered to do their job. We have the utmost confidence in the professionals who work in health in the territory. We believe they have the expertise and the experience to deliver the best health services in Australia. However, due to the poor framework in place and her inability to make decisions, the health minister is not giving her staff the best opportunity to do their job.
The recent report by the Auditor-General—report No 1 of 2011, Waiting lists for elective surgery and medical treatment—is further evidence of just how bad the situation is. We know that these issues are complex and there are many variables and stakeholders within the health department and health portfolio. In fact, it is this complexity which means the leadership and management of the system is all the more important. This complexity is not lost on the Auditor-General either. The auditor understands the nature of such areas of government and takes into account those very issues.
The key findings of the Auditor-General’s report include:
ACT Health’s implementation and the monitoring processes were not managed well to deliver the intended outcomes.
Current practices in compiling the waiting lists have compromised the policy intention of promoting clinically appropriate, consistent and equitable management of elective surgery waiting lists. In particular, downgrades of patients’ urgency category, often without documented clinical reasons, raised considerable doubts about the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications for patients on the waiting lists.
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