Page 1264 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 2013
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So across the board, with regard to the state of our health system, when you look at it under this government, what we have seen is decline and what we see are systemic problems that need to be addressed and are not being addressed under this minister. (Time expired.)
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Health and Minister for Higher Education) (3.45): I welcome the opportunity to talk about the health system, because of my intense interest in it and my deep passion for it. I would say that it has been a week for stump speeches over there in opposition land. In fact, I think we should start to consider nicknaming Mr Hanson “Stumpy”, because he walks in here and gives exactly the same speech. The only thing he seems to have forgotten is that there has been an election and I have been judged. I have been judged against all of the examples that Mr Hanson reads out ad nauseam, again and again. The community have had their opportunity to judge me and my performance, Mr Hanson, and I will leave it at that.
Mr Hanson started by saying, “We can only be disappointed.” That is the way he opens his speech about the ACT’s public health system: “We can only be disappointed.” That is how he would sum up the public health system here. He then went on to talk about the disgraceful conditions that women are experiencing at the women’s and children’s hospital. I will be very interested in receiving his clinical expertise in discharge practices for women, because he seems to have made some judgements about that on his own, and also any complaints that he has received around that. We discussed this at annual reports and, of the 1,000 babies that have been born at the women’s and children’s hospital, we have had seven complaints come in, in terms of women feeling that they were discharged early.
So that is where we start. The Liberal Party think they can only be disappointed by the public health system. I am not coming in here to read a stump speech, because I actually care about the public health system a little more than the people who file Jeremy Hanson’s speeches under “2012 stump speech”. “Look, it’s the same as the 2011 stump speech. Look, the 2013 stump speech is exactly the same as well.”
I care about it a little more than that, and Mr Hanson had 15 minutes to outline his leadership, his vision and what he would do in the health system. He did not take the opportunity because he does not have an idea. It is very easy to stand up and criticise, point the finger and blame the end of world peace on the health minister here. It is very easy to do that. We can all do that. One of the parts of our jobs is to be able to criticise each other. It is a lot harder and what we do not see and have not seen from the opposition are any views on what they would do, and any vision that they might have for the health system.
In fact, let us go back to the election. What did we see? Mr Hanson had no ideas, so he adopted ours. That is what he did. We had that rather embarrassing situation where they had to race out to Calvary in the last week and copy our Calvary policy because they had forgotten one. But then they had to, instead of—
Members interjecting—
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