Page 3111 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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having known about the problem for over a year. Nothing will bring Lima Thatcher back, and I express my sympathy for her family, but we must make sure this sort of thing does not happen again. That does not happen by hiding the truth, or pretending there is no problem. And there is a problem. Katy Gallagher’s own executive director says it puts patients at “significant risk”.
Once again, just today, we have a serious failure of management, we have serious personal outcomes, we have senior executives who knew about the problem—yet the Chief Minister hides it from the public. That is the story of Katy Gallagher as Chief Minister and health minister. She has created a system that generates the worst results in the country, and will say and do anything to avoid telling this truth. It is a culture of cover-up, of an “inner circle” of cronies and of chronic bullying that has poisoned the very heart of our system.
I wish I could offer some comfort to those in pain by telling them that their experiences are unusual, rare, or one of a kind. I cannot, because their experiences are not rare. They are examples of a system in crisis that are finally coming to light after years of being shrouded in the dim cloak of deceit.
The first is the undeniable fact that this health system has been shattered by this minister.
When Katy Gallagher and Labor took office in 2001, Jon Stanhope made it a priority to improve the health system. The Auditor-General’s most recent report in fact confirms that there has been a 10-year decline in the system. According to AIHW reports at the time, our emergency department times and elective surgery times were among the best in the country when Labor took office. The best in the country.
When Labor took over, 80 per cent of urgent ED patients were seen on time. After 11 years of Labor and six years of Katy Gallagher as health minister, only 60 per cent were seen on time. When Labor took over, the median wait was 39 days for elective surgery. After 11 years of Labor and six years of Katy Gallagher as health minister, the median wait is 74 days, and many suffer for far longer.
Despite Labor’s selective memory and historical rewriting, the fact is that those results are now the worst in the country. And not by a small margin: we are now nearly double the national average. According to ACT Health’s 2010-11 annual report, in category 2 the median wait is 103 days; in category 3 the median wait is 225 days; some non-urgent patients wait a year to be seen. Eleven years of Labor; 11 years of decline. Mr Speaker, 11 years is long enough. It is a simple fact that this Chief Minister does not have the answers and cannot fix the problems.
The other inescapable and inexcusable facts, though, are that these are not the worst part of this story. The problems go much deeper into the culture of our health system, and they come directly from the management of Katy Gallagher. The problems I am referring to are not ones of facts and figures, reports and reviews. The problems I am referring to are of endemic bullying and systemic fraud, of a system in crisis that causes real pain, real suffering and real heartbreak.
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