Page 537 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 March 2023
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Health—Garran Surge Centre
MS CASTLEY: Mr Acting Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health. I refer the minister to her repeated blaming of staff shortages for the government’s inability to stand up the Garran Surge Centre as a supplementary emergency department. At the outset of a world COVID pandemic, with no vaccines on the horizon and with emergency departments overseas overwhelmed, why did the government not ensure that the Garran Surge Centre could be staffed over the long term before it was built?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Ms Castley is drawing an incredibly long bow there. I am not going to have time in two minutes to go through all of the challenges with the way that she has determined this question. Let me put some context around it.
In early 2020, when the surge centre was built, if we had seen the kind of wave of COVID-19 that we were seeing in Europe and the United States, with our hospitals overwhelmed, our emergency departments overwhelmed, every health worker would have been working to address this challenge. In London, dieticians were working in intensive care units! So that was the challenge we were facing in early 2020.
Subsequently, Ms Castley is talking about a period in 2022 when she was talking about, “Why do we not switch the surge centre back on as an emergency department?” I made the point at that time, more than two years later, that at that time while our emergency departments were busy, it would not help to create a third emergency department and to spread the staff over three sites rather than two when our primary challenge that we were facing at that time was a staffing issue, because a lot of staff were ill with COVID, with other respiratory illnesses, or they were isolating as a result of coming into contact with someone with COVID, so they were in quarantine. Our challenge at that time, more than two years later, was a completely different challenge, and Ms Castley is drawing a ridiculous comparison again.
MS CASTLEY: Minister, given the government contracted Aspen Medical to staff the Garran Surge Centre as required, was it prudent to limit this contract to six months and not ensure the facility could be staffed beyond that?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Again, I have absolutely no idea what Ms Castley is getting at. The Garran Surge Centre was being used. It was not sitting idle and empty. It was being used throughout the pandemic as a testing site, as a vaccination site, and then as a testing site.
In the period of time that Ms Castley I suppose is talking about the surge centre was being used. I actually do not know what she is talking about in terms of when we were expected to use these Aspen staff that she is talking about—and I would emphasise, Mr Acting Speaker, that in those later periods of the pandemic, Aspen itself was struggling with staffing issues, and we can see that in other jurisdictions.
But the surge centre was being used, and so any change in use of the surge centre and that use was being staffed. It was also used as a COVID-19 walk-in centre for people who had COVID-19 who needed access to treatment for minor injury and illness. It was being used effectively as part of our pandemic response, and that use was being staffed. I actually have no idea what Ms Castley is talking about.
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