Page 225 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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could to cover up data and to attack the 13 doctors that resigned, all the way through to her refusal today to accept that it was the political imperative that led to the fabrication of data at the Canberra Hospital. We need to make sure the review of this hospital is independent.
It is quite clear there are questions that will not be answered in this review. You can imagine how it is going to come back, no doubt commending the minister for building such a wonderful hospital, but what we will not know is why it is already full? A $110 million dollar hospital. Will it go to the matter of why this hospital is so late? It was meant to be fully opened late last year. It is not going to be opened until late next year, and that is just on current projections. Why is it so over budget? Why is it $20 million dollars over budget? Will we ever find that out? Why was it based on a flawed model and why did this government get the model so badly wrong?
Why did she ignore the advice of experts? The ANF say they have been providing warnings to the government for a while. The minister here today said she had received no warnings, I think, until this year. That is a matter of dispute. Why was the hospital opened with safety flaws? There are two that we know of—the code blue and parts of the building falling apart and nearly landing on a baby. Two infants nearly died. Will we ever find out answers to that? Why is that doctors have warned of safety concerns through capacity constraints? Do you think any of these will come in this review?
What about the staff morale? Do you think there will be an inquiry as part of this into what we are hearing from the nurses? What Mr Rattenbury and I heard very clearly from a midwife on the eve of the election—a very irate midwife—was that she and her colleagues were very upset, going on stress leave, and very, very concerned about what is happening, not just for themselves but more so for the patients. The midwives and the doctors and the other staff that work in that hospital do so because they are passionate about the health care they provide. They are passionate about the mothers they look after. They are passionate about the babies they deliver. They are so distraught about the fact that they have these young mothers, or in some cases older mothers, whom they are pushing out of this hospital because the model is flawed because this government did not do the job right.
Let me read a quote that I did not read in my speech. It is from the Canberra Times of 8 October:
Upon returning from a visit to the twins in the neonatal intensive care unit, she discovered her personal belongings had been removed from her room and a cleaner was in the process of taking breast milk she had expressed for the twins from the fridge.
Mrs Holland spent the next two hours in a waiting room before she was discharged.
“I told the nurse I felt like a homeless person,” she said.
This is a woman that had twins, who had a code blue, a code blue that failed, who says she felt like a homeless person. And this is the shining star, the jewel in the crown of Katy Gallagher’s health redevelopment plan. A hospital that cost
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