Page 2644 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 2013
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grown by eight or nine per cent in the year if we had not opened the walk-in centre—and nobody could measure it. But it is just as valid an argument as the one Mr Hanson puts.
But putting all of that aside, we were looking at a GP shortage, huge pressure on our emergency departments and very busy hospitals—so, yes, find me guilty as charged of implementing a new health service that had never been tried before in any public system in the country.
Mr Hanson: Are you responsible for anything?
MS GALLAGHER: I am responsible for everything, Mr Hanson, unlike you.
Mr Hanson: Really? Only the good news.
MS GALLAGHER: Absolutely everything. Right, yes, the day is full of good news, Mr Hanson.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Doszpot): Mr Hanson, you were given a relatively good run. Could you please desist from any further interjections.
MS GALLAGHER: The day is full of good news. That is the day in the life of a Chief Minister—and I say that with a heavy level of sarcasm for the benefit of Hansard.
In relation to the paediatric waiting area, this was an election commitment of the government. In my time as health minister, and certainly when we were developing the women’s and children’s hospital, I wanted to see a paediatric emergency department in the women’s and children’s hospital. At the time I was briefed by officials in a range of meetings that I had around that project that that was not the way to go. That was supported by the emergency department clinicians I spoke to at the time. They did not want to see a fragmented emergency department, and because of the layout of how that building was going to be built, that would have compromised the emergency department care. And I took that advice.
Instead, I found money and we built a paediatric waiting area in the emergency department as a way of addressing some of the complaints that I was getting from parents about how children were having to wait in areas where, particularly on the weekends, there was a level of presentations affected by alcohol, and parents were very distressed at that. So within the confines of the emergency department we created a paediatric waiting area and within the emergency department a paediatric space was operational.
I received information from clinicians when I was putting my own election policies together specifically in relation to the paediatric area, and Mr Hanson adopted those. It is not my fault he had not done his homework over whether it was a good or bad thing. He just adopted it the next day. Now he has to stand by that. But I had done the work myself as a politician creating an election commitment. It was not driven by the department; it was driven by me.
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