Page 2873 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MRS DUNNE: Minister Stephen-Smith can chatter across the chamber all she likes, but it will not drown out the fact—
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Ms Stephen-Smith, please!
MRS DUNNE: that she and her predecessors have not and will not listen to the people who are the experts. These are the people with the dicky knees, the bad hips and the bad shoulders who would not be able to get around, who would not be able to get out of their beds of a day, if it were not for hydrotherapy. These are the people who have said to me that they were on a pain management regime, that their pain could not be managed by pain experts in the ACT until they discovered hydrotherapy.
Their lives have been literally transformed. If this government takes away hydrotherapy from these people, the result will be foreshortened, miserable lives with more admissions to a hospital that is under stress. If Minister Stephen-Smith wants to create foreshortened, miserable lives amongst her constituents, that will be on her conscience, not mine.
We have heard this from this minister over and over again. It was interesting. She said that she does not want to put words into the mouth of Arthritis ACT. But it is alright to put words into my mouth or Mrs Jones’s mouth. If she goes back and reads the transcript, we have said over and over again that we understand that the Canberra Hospital hydrotherapy pool must close in the future. We understand that. What you have to do is get on with the replacement. What you should have been doing for years is getting on with the replacement. We should have had a replacement.
This is the problem with this government. They cannot plan. Their capacity for health planning is appalling. We have had an on-again, off-again refurbishment of the Canberra Hospital. It was promised in 2012. It was taken off the agenda. It was promised in 2016. It is now possible that, if they can get their act together, put together a planning group, finalise a business case and do all of these sorts of things, we might get something by 2023.
We built a women’s and children’s hospital that was not big enough and did not anticipate a growth in population. They promised a women’s and children’s hospital at the election in 2016 by 2019. It is August 2019 and they have not turned a sod. They have not even finished the planning.
Mr Rattenbury promised that there would be an adolescent mental health unit as part of that. I came in here yesterday and said that my recollection was that Mr Rattenbury had promised that it would be available in 2019. We checked the record, and I will put this on the record now. Mr Rattenbury said in annual reports hearings in 2017 that it would be available, open for use, in early 2020. So my recollection was not absolutely perfect. I put on the record that I said 2019 yesterday. But it is August 2019 now and they have not turned a sod. It is not happening in 2020. We know that it is not happening in 2020 because the minister told the health committee last week that it was happening in 2023. They cannot plan anything.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video