Page 2683 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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What we have seen is a mislead and broken promises. The electorate will question why they should trust this minister. Even if she does go ahead with these projects that she promised, should they trust her that they will be operating on time and on budget? Look at the evidence—be it the women’s and children’s hospital, the bush healing farm, the Canberra Hospital car park or any number of projects—and ask whether they will be delivered on time or on budget.
She needs to explain to patients why they got lost in the system, and we have seen numerous examples of that. I think she needs to explain why it is that people were bullied in her hospital and she protected the bullies. She needs to explain that. She needs to explain why elective surgery patients were downgraded without reason. She needs to explain why it is that she could not even put emergency department data in the budget that was tabled yesterday, because it has been doctored and falsified. She came in here with last year’s budget, all the annual reports and the quarterly reports and, waving them, said, “Look how good emergency departments are.” That was all based on a lie. It was based on doctored information. I think she needs to explain that to the community.
Let us go into a little more detail and have a look at the declining state of our health system, the decline over a decade. Let us turn first to the ED. When we say that it has gone from one of the best in the country to one of the worst, let us have a look at the facts. We go to the AIHW and the reports they put out on hospital statistics. If you look at 2000-01 and compare it to the 2011 report, when you look at the total numbers you will see that 78 per cent of patients were seen on time. That was the legacy of the Liberals—78 per cent were seen on time.
It was actually the best in the country. I refer you to it. It is at table 4.11—the best in the country, and by some way, in actual fact. It was 10 per cent better than the next best. Let us see what the sorry state is in the last report. It was 58 per cent, the second worst behind the Northern Territory. So we have gone from the best to the worst. The minister will say, “We haven’t.” We have. We still do not know what the state is because the figures that have been presented by the minister are dodgy.
Let us talk to that. What a shameful episode. Emergency department figures are not inconsequential. They are life and death. The Medical Journal of Australia in 2012 published an article that showed that the cutting of emergency department waiting times in WA had saved lives. What then happened is that AIHW, as I said, came out and showed that we had the worst emergency department times in the history of the ACT and the second worst in the nation behind the Northern Territory. What happened later that day? The minister comes out and goes: “I’ve got some other figures. Don’t worry about the AIHW. I’ve got some other figures here based on my report. Trust me; they’re much better.” Let us listen to the quote:
… the figures contained in this report have been superseded by the more recent figures released today as part of the Report Card.
More recent figures that were doctored. Then there was:
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