Page 457 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 February 2013
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Ms Gallagher: Oh, and I haven’t, Steve?
MR DOSZPOT: You are certainly not exhibiting those—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot, resume your seat, please. When members are speaking to the motion, or to the amendment, as is the case at the moment, they should please address the chair. Do not have conversations across the chamber and with members opposite. Address your comments through the chair and continue with your speech, instead of engaging in conversation with the minister. If the minister does not engage in conversation across the chamber, that would be helpful.
MR DOSZPOT: Madam Deputy Speaker, I am very happy to take your direction, and I would also ask that that direction be given in a little bit more robust terms to the Chief Minister, who started engaging with me before I had engaged with her.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot, you do not need to tell me how to do my job. I have already spoken to Ms Gallagher, as you heard. Just continue on.
MR DOSZPOT: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We were talking about the 11,700 cases of fraud that apparently the Chief Minister found very hard to understand. The health minister could not run from these figures. They were not a Liberal Party beat-up. They were stark reminders—Chief Minister, 11,700 stark reminders that will not leave you alone. And all the while, while all of this was going on, the waiting lists have become longer than before, and worse than anywhere else in Australia.
Yesterday we discussed the issue of the latest report from the government, the Productivity Commission’s report on government services. Waiting times are worse in every category, with only 44 in every 100 patients requiring semi-urgent treatment being seen on time. It is even worse for urgent cases. Only 42 per cent are seen within acceptable time frames. For six years, the health minister, Ms Gallagher, has been saying she would improve the ACT health system and for six years we have seen our emergency department waiting times get worse. We also have elective surgery delays and staff that are under pressure and we have had emergency department delays.
During the last election campaign, a whole host of promises were made. Labor promised $74 million for new beds, doctors and nurses at Canberra Hospital, in addition to providing 70 new beds at Calvary hospital. There is the construction of a new subacute hospital on the north side, to which Labor says it is fully committed but to which it has yet to set aside any more than $4 million for planning purposes. That might have persuaded some voters and was possibly welcomed by hospital staff and health professionals, but it will be just another cruel abuse of hospital staff if it comes to naught, and the track record on this is not good.
Certainly, the government’s track record on health did not impress a Labor health minister in South Australia. In commenting late last year in the South Australian parliament about a study published by the Australasian College for Emergency
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