Page 1992 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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The Minister for Health has announced a $30 million fund which includes, amongst other things, $22 million for elective surgery. Mr Stanhope has described this as a sugar hit that will have no impact past this election year. That sugar hit is designed to address the 2,250 surgeries that were not performed during the COVID crisis and does nothing to address the growing elective surgery waitlist. There will be many other people added to the list during the COVID crisis, and the list is now burgeoning.
We have seen Labor offer short-term elective surgery blitzes in the past. They have failed to result in long-term solutions. The government constantly says that more surgeries are being performed, but we are not seeing a decline in the number of surgeries and we are not seeing a decline in the waitlists.
One of the very concerning things—we in the opposition are constantly coming across this—is instances where people have been waiting a very long time even to get onto the elective surgery waitlist. There is a hidden elective surgery waitlist. For instance, I had correspondence from someone only yesterday. I will call him Clarrie. Clarrie has waited 655 days for his first appointment to see an orthopaedic surgeon, to be told that he needs a complete shoulder reconstruction. To add insult to injury, after waiting 655 days, he was told that he will have to wait 12 months for that surgery.
That is a category 3 surgery. Category 3 surgery in orthopaedics is a 12-month wait, ideally, but in the ACT it will be longer than that. I fear for Clarrie. Remember that someone who needs a complete shoulder reconstruction is probably suffering from spontaneous dislocation on a regular basis. It is painful. Every time you put it back, you do more injury to your shoulder. If Clarrie has been waiting 2½ years, 655 days, and then has to wait another year, how many times will Clarrie’s shoulder spontaneously dislocate as he is picking up a glass, putting a jumper on or doing one of those everyday things? How much pain does that cause? How much damage does that cause to Clarrie’s shoulder? How much worse will his shoulder reconstruction be at the end of that time?
The people of the ACT deserve—in this rich country, in this rich city—a better health service than the Labor government has provided, especially since the departure of Katy Gallagher as the health minister. Ms Gallagher was criticised for many things, but the actions of her successors as health minister have been a shadow of what she tried to achieve and wanted to achieve. Her successors have trashed her legacy by abandoning all of the proposals that were put forward. They have given up on the bed strategy. We do not have the acute beds.
We still have what Ms Gallagher constantly referred to as a tsunami in health. We are getting older; we are requiring more services. The services are more expensive, but this government has failed to deliver them. We have chronic failures in the elective surgery wait time. This government needs to do more. This minister will stand up and say, “We’re doing everything that we can.” The answer is that there is a better way, and it is not the Labor way. (Time expired.)
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children, Youth and Families and Minister for Health) (4.39): I move the following amendment that has been circulated in my name:
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