Page 3162 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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MR HARGREAVES: A supplementary, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES: In the vein of the Leader of the Opposition’s question—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: Okay, you win. What has the opening of the women and children’s hospital done to the confidence of the community in the health system, Chief Minister?
MS GALLAGHER: I think it is—
Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Mr Speaker—
MR SPEAKER: One moment, Chief Minister; thank you. Stop the clocks.
Mrs Dunne: I ask you to rule on the relevance of the question. Mr Seselja’s original question was about the case of Mrs Thatcher and her family. How does the opening of the women’s and children’s hospital relate to the original question?
Mr Hargreaves: On the point of order, Mr Speaker—
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hargreaves.
Mr Hargreaves: The last part of the question of the Leader of the Opposition was about how can the community have confidence in the health system and that is where I wanted to go.
MR SPEAKER: The question is not out of order. I think Mr Hargreaves has framed it in the context of the confidence in the health system. Chief Minister.
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is very clear that the community does support the public health system here. In fact, the clearest measure of that is in the measure of utilisation of public health services here. They are the best in the country—next, I think, only to the Northern Territory, which have no private or a very limited range of private hospital choices.
What that says—and it is AIHW data—is that people choose to come to the public health system. We have the highest level of private health cover in the country and the lowest utilisation of it. Again, what that says is people know that if they come to the public health system they will be treated and they will be treated well.
That is not to say that there will not be adverse events that occur; they do occur. But when you look at what the hospital system in large part provides—300,000 bed days a year, over 100,000 cost weighted separations, over 110,000 people going to the emergency department—then you start thinking about the work that is done in these
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