Page 3130 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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MR HANSON: It does not change what has happened. We have been deceived. The community has been deceived. The community has been misled—whatever language you want to choose. No wonder the Chief Minister would not want the word “lie” used. No wonder she feels sensitive about it and no wonder the Labor Party and the Greens feel sensitive about it. Whatever language we use, we know what happened. We know what happened at our emergency department and we know that people were not told the truth.
The litany of failures goes on. Why is it that at the last election the Chief Minister said to the community that all of her plans were on the table when they were not, when behind closed doors she had been engaging in secret negotiations, requesting a heads of agreement on the purchase of Calvary hospital, a massive health plan? Meanwhile she was saying to the community, “All my plans are on the table.” What plans is she taking to this election that she is hiding from the community? Is it school closures? Is it the purchase of a hospital? Is it getting rid of an important asset for the community like Clare Holland House? What is she hiding from the community this time as she has on previous occasions?
Most importantly, what we have seen is the human tragedy, the human face, of this. Although we have seen the deceit about the statistics, ultimately there are people that are affected. We have seen stories like young DJ Gill, who, as an infant, was exposed to TB in the hospital and died after being given a TB test. Then his parents were sent the bill for that. That is outrageous. We have seen Vesna Nedic, who was a cancer patient, lost in the system, bouncing between various parts of the system and then being sent off to Sydney.
We have seen the family of the first victim of the swine flu where the communication was so bad with the patient that the Chief Minister was forced to apologise. We have seen nurse Kate Virtue, who was electrocuted in the system and then neglected. We have seen the human face of elective surgery—people like David Wentworth, who had his urgent surgery downgraded and waited well over a year for that surgery. Maurizio Salza took his wife to the emergency department one night in April—she had mastitis and was in agony—and waited there with a one-week-old baby for hours. We have heard his story. Kate and Holly Chaloner are here today. Their grandmother had an operation on the wrong hip and subsequently died. What we know is that Lima Thatcher was just one of 50 per cent of Canberra Hospital patients who have been going to that hospital and, in the words of the executive director for safety, are being put at significant risk because the vital surgical safety checklist is not being completed.
As much as the Chief Minister would decry claims from the opposition that this is a health system in crisis, we see on the front page of the Canberra Times yet another story that shows systemic failure where the executive director of safety is saying that 50 per cent of surgical patients at the Canberra Hospital are being placed at significant risk. We see the human face of that in grandmother Lima Thatcher and her granddaughters who have bravely come forward. I commend them for doing so because many people have come to the opposition, particularly staff who have been very poorly treated and bullied in the health system, but they are simply too scared to come forward.
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