Page 1633 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 9 May 2018
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The issues that need to be addressed here are serious. Although there has been some questioning of the minister and some assurances, they were not her personal assurances. I note yesterday that the minister was very careful not to give her own personal guarantee. She gave assurances based on the information provided to her. I think the people of the ACT need more than that.
Labor’s so-called 10-year health plan promised that a surgical procedures, interventional radiology and emergency facility, known as SPIRE, would be built on the Woden campus by 2022. In the 2017-18 budget most of the work on this project has been deferred until beyond the next election. On 12 March 2018 media reports indicated the SPIRE centre would now not be finished until almost 2025, which is two elections away. The SPIRE centre has been progressively put off. The community cannot afford the delays to the SPIRE centre at the Canberra Hospital as it gets older and the problems of infrastructure there are causing problems for staff and patients as well as visitors.
Long-term planning issues can often be set aside during restructures, and this will cause further problems. The Canberra community needs assurance that the SPIRE centre will not languish on the backburner as the minister lurches from calamity to crisis. At the moment there will be one more accreditation report before the SPIRE is built. This motion calls on the minister to provide an update to the Assembly which includes a full timetable for the design and construction of the facility. The people of Canberra need to have certainty about their hospital infrastructure.
The final part of my motion relates to the hidden waiting lists. On 20 February 2018 the Canberra Times reported on the case of a disability pensioner facing a five-year wait just to see a specialist. Once she sees the specialist, she faces a potential long wait for elective surgery. There is no doubt that this patient needs elective surgery, but this patient faces an incredibly long wait. While the minister states that not all urology patients need surgery, five years is a long time to wait to have a treatment plan for a condition that involves medication or any other sort of treatment.
The minister has committed to providing information on hidden waiting lists, as has happened in Victoria. I note that in response to the Standing Committee on Health and Community Services report into annual reports last year the minister undertook to start providing this information. But as yet there is no timetable for how this information will be provided and how this information will actually be presented. That is why this motion also calls for work to be done and tabled in this place on that matter.
In conclusion, it is time for the wonky governance, as the AMA put it, of the ACT health department to end. The Minister for Health and Wellbeing needs to produce these documents and address the issues in this motion so that there is capacity to address the issues emerging in the community. I commend the motion to the Assembly, a motion which calls simply for the presentation of papers and the provision of information, the sort of information that the ACT community is entitled to see.
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