Page 2848 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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government can spend. The Treasurer and the Chief Minister have been gleeful in telling how much money they have spent on health, for example. “A billion dollars,” they cry. “A 158 per cent increase,” they claim.
They cannot escape the fact that under their stewardship, on their watch, they have taken one of the best performing health systems in the country and turned it into the worst—worse than Victoria, which cost the Labor Party government, worse than Queensland, which saw the Labor Party routed, and far worse than New South Wales, long considered the low watermark for competency and complacency.
We have been talking about the continued, debilitating failures in our health system all week, and we have been decrying the continual, desperate defence from the minister responsible for those failures. Katy Gallagher and ACT Labor could not fix the problem. No matter how much they promised to spend or how many reforms they promised to make, they could not deliver.
We remember as waiting lists started getting longer, both in emergency departments and for important elective surgery such as knee and hip operations. We were appalled as emergency departments were pushed to breaking point with patients classified as urgent waiting up to 24 hours to be seen or travelling to Sydney for life-saving treatments. There were banner headlines telling Katy Gallagher three years ago we were critically short of health professionals. It got so bad that nurses and health professionals started to seriously fear for patient safety. Still no solutions.
Then the undeniable truth was published—our waiting lists had gone from the best in the country to the worst in the country. But that was not the end of it. I was in the chamber the day Katy Gallagher let slip that there had been a “10-year war” in the health department. A situation had festered to the point that our doctors were leaving en masse rather than continue to work in Katy Gallagher’s health system. This was not an external factor or a national shortage or a lack of funds; this was bad management, pure and simple—your management, Chief Minister. It got so bad that doctors groups demanded Katy Gallagher’s resignation.
How do we hope for a better future in health when our history has doctors groups calling for the minister’s removal? All of that is before it was discovered that patients were being reclassified to take patients off the most serious waiting lists and the ED waiting times were being altered.
After 11 years in power, six years as minister and your second year as Chief Minister, this government has had to put out a budget that states that the results of emergency department performance in the territory are under formal investigation. Again, a lack of competence and a complete lack of candour. Just like the promises made in the last election year.
In 2008 Katy Gallagher promised three nurse-led walk-in clinics to take the pressure off the emergency departments. Only one was delivered. Only months ago, the Chief Minister had the temerity to re-announce the policy for this election, announcing new centres. One of them was a replacement for the sole centre delivered, and none of them were funded properly. It shows the utter contempt this Chief Minister has for the public. Chief Minister, I think they are now waking up to you.
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