Page 4065 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
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MS GALLAGHER: Because there are no performance indicators for it, and none are required in any other hospital because it is impossible, I think, to manage.
Mr Hanson: It’s not happening in any other hospital.
MS GALLAGHER: What a load of rubbish coming out of Mr Hanson—as usual—“It’s not happening in any other hospital.” Of course it happens in hospitals all around the country. It is not a performance measure of how a hospital is functioning. It has an emergency load which is dealt with in times faster than category 1 elective surgery—much faster. I am not going to create a measure that puts more undue pressure on a hospital that is already dealing with an incredible amount of reporting and data requirements and performance requirements.
The data I see is usually how much emergency load there is—is it 24 hours in one day, is it 48 hours in one day—and how they get through that. For the most part, people do not wait at all because of the level of care that is provided. Where there are waits, it is for category 4—less urgent conditions that are not life or limb threatening.
That is my position. I am not going to change it. We report the amount of emergency work, and it is a huge credit to the hospital that it is able to deliver the standard of care and the volume of care on an annual basis without any support from private or other public hospitals in this region.
Transport—light rail
MR COE: My question is to the Minister for Capital Metro. Minister, I refer to an article by economist David Hughes in the Canberra Times of 17 November. Dr Hughes said:
According to the business case, replacing some buses with some trams on the road to Gungahlin will, among other things, increase economic growth, population, private investment, productivity, employment and business innovation in the ACT.
He went on to say:
Light rail is worse than folly. It is fantasy.
Minister, why will replacing some buses with some trams on the road to Gungahlin increase economic growth, population, private investment, productivity, employment and business innovation, especially when increased density can happen without light rail?
MR CORBELL: I thank Mr Coe for the question. Dr Hughes’s views on this project are well known and they were well known before he had the opportunity to review the business case. I think he comes with a particular perspective in relation to these projects. This is the same Dr Hughes of course that, I think, is on the record as saying that he thinks public transport should not be funded by the public and that, instead, it should be only delivered if it is profit making. These are the types of positions that of course this government does not agree with.
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