Page 2557 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of debate about emergency departments. We have exposed many of the problems, and the ongoing excuse from the health minister is: “You cannot compare apples and oranges; this is different; you cannot compare TCH with other hospitals.” That is true. When you look at the national figures, they are all put together, and certainly the ACT looks disastrous, but what this page does is compare peer group hospitals, and we flatline; we are going nowhere.
Across Australia, advances are being made. Lives are being saved and women, children and the elderly, people in pain, are waiting less time for treatment, to be admitted, whereas in the ACT that is not the case. Why is that? Under this health minister, under this government, we are flatlining, when across the rest of Australia matters are improving. We know that one of the reasons is the massive fabrication of data, but, beyond that, what is the excuse? After 12 or 13 years of this government, after repeated health ministers, after this minister has been health minister for six or seven years, we have seen no improvement in our emergency department. In fact, we have gone backwards.
I now turn to the issue of the tower block and what is going on, because we have seen a lack of coherence in health infrastructure planning. It was the capital asset development plan. They had a plan that was going to build a tower block. In fact, I will quote now from the 2011-12 budget press release:
This investment provides $41 million to progress the next stage of planning and design for new infrastructure such as a new tower block at The Canberra Hospital which will be designed to accommodate the majority of all inpatient activity at the hospital in the future. This new tower block will ensure that our tertiary referral hospital is able to meet projected increases in inpatient bed numbers in a modern hospital setting able to provide health care in the safest and most efficient way.
Anyone reading that in 2011 would have thought, “Wow! They are investing in a new tower block. Isn’t that wonderful?” But, as is so often the case, in the lead-up to an election we are told one story: “Tens of millions are going to be put into planning and then we are going to build this $800 million new tower block. It is going to secure us and our future and everything is going to be good in the health system.”
After the election, we got a different story—we found out last year that construction of Canberra’s new $800 million hospital heart would be put on hold while the ACT government focuses on hospital beds in the north. They have now frozen the $41 million in the budget. We have a situation where it is one thing before the election and another after. It is a bit like the secure mental health facility—“It’ll be built. Trust us”—or the bush healing farm or the tower block or improved EDs. We move on from the election and what do we find? We find no tower block. We find the secure mental health facility is not built. We find the ED is flatlining. The biggest irony of them all was the walk-in centre at the Canberra Hospital. We said it should not be moved out of Canberra Hospital, and we saw the outrage from Labor Party officials and the Chief Minister. And what did they do shortly after the election? They closed the walk-in centre at the Canberra Hospital.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video