Page 2703 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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Mr Hanson went through some of the history. It is quite telling that the simple answer of the Labor Party before the 2001 election was a $6 million cash injection. They did that in 2001 and they took it out of the 2002-03 budget. Mr Stanhope, and Mr Hanson quoted the former Chief Minister, said, “This will cause pain.” They gutted the elective surgery waiting list funding. That is what they did. They took money out of elective surgery. Stanhope admitted in the estimates committee, I think in responding to questions to me, that it would cause pain. That pain has rippled through the system ever since, because they just do not get it.
We understand that you have to fund health properly. That is why it was a Liberal initiative to put the growth funds in and to keep them there. The Labor Party of the day called them a slush fund. But they live off it now because they were the saving of the health system. We knew that you had to plan for the future and you had to be continually ahead of the game, not constantly catching up because you have ignored the indicators and you have ignored the way that health changes. And health changes dramatically year to year, let alone over a 10-year period.
You can see it simply in the Chief Minister’s response to the issue of GPs. Before the 2008 election, when a GP clinic closed at Wanniassa, the then health minister, the present Chief Minister, threw her hands up and said, “There’s nothing I can do.” The former Liberal health minister said, “Let’s have a look at this.” We did, and there were numerous things that we could point out that could be done.
Mr Hanson did the same as the GP trough continued under this government. They constantly throw their hands up. Have you ever noticed, Mr Speaker, how it is everybody else’s fault? There is no taking of responsibility by most of the ministry, if not all of the ministry. It is always somebody else’s fault. It is an external factor; it is something beyond their control; it is another level of government; it is the individual’s fault. But it is never their fault. You wonder why they sit on those benches.
Then we had Mr Hanson call for an inquiry. Again, numerous things that could be done came out of that. At the end of the day, GPs want to be part of a system and they understand that they are part of a system. When a GP has a patient in his or her office and they ring and say, “I need an ambulance because I have got this patient here and their condition warrants immediate transport to the hospital and it warrants immediate attention at the hospital,” they want to know that they work in a system that works.
Health cannot be silos, as the Chief Minister would have you believe. The health minister would have you believe that she is only responsible for this bit. She is responsible for the health and wellbeing of all Canberrans, no matter where they fall in the system or which part of the system they are using.
This is the party that has stood up for all the system, whether it be for the pharmacists who provide in most cases the most immediate and primary health care, whether it be for the GPs, where people go when they are sick and they are unsure of what is wrong, whether it be for the emergency department, where they go because it is an emergency, or whether it be because they call for an ambulance because it is an emergency.
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