Page 1608 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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shadow minister in the performance of his duties. He seems to take great pleasure in announcing that there is “more grim news for the ACT’s health system”. And I have to say that, if there is any bad news to generate, Mr Hanson is the first one to lead that brigade. He always appears to be genuinely excited if there is some news that he can turn into a negative around the health system.
What Mr Hanson fails to acknowledge in his media release is that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report on the medical workforce shows that there have been 183 extra employed medical practitioners during this data set that has been set out. In, I think, 2006, there were 1,340 employed medical practitioners—that is, doctors working in the ACT—and this has grown to 1,523 in the latest results.
The figures that Mr Hanson uses to quote from are for registered medical practitioners. As Mr Hanson would know, “registered medical practitioners” does not necessarily translate into “employed medical practitioners”. Mr Hanson has jumped on table A1 in this report. That features a number of caveats on the data. And I do think it is interesting that Mr Hanson has also selectively chosen to quote from this report and has decided that table A1 is actually the most relevant document here.
In his media release he goes on to say that we have doctors leaving the ACT, that there is a workforce loss, when there clearly is not any workforce loss. Indeed, I am sure Mr Hanson saw the table about employed medical practitioners in the ACT, because that appeared before table A1, which is the table he jumped on.
As Mr Hanson would know, national registration came in in July 2010. That required doctors to only have one registration whereas, in the past, there may have been the need for multiple registrations. So it is quite clear that doctors who may be practising in the ACT but who hold New South Wales registration would choose to register in the location where they reside.
Essentially, it is a very misleading media release to allege that doctors are leaving the ACT in the way that he has. I think it is—
Mr Doszpot: So what is the actual percentage?
MS GALLAGHER: The actual percentage shows that there has been an increase, quite a considerable increase, and that is what the media release should have said: “Mr Hanson welcomes the extra doctors working in the ACT, as shown by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare”. Instead, he chooses to use a figure around registered medical practitioners, knowing that there has been a change in the way medical practitioners are registered, that every jurisdiction has seen a significant decline in the numbers of registered practitioners because of those changes. The actual responsible thing to do is welcome the good news—and it is not a political thing—that there are more doctors working in the public and private health systems than ever before. But not for the Canberra Liberals that need to be at the front of trying to generate every bad news story they can!
Why would you not take a bit of pleasure from the fact that there are more doctors here than in the past? Regardless of what political party you are a member of, why
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