Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2330 ..

access to more than 130 additional hospital places. And this process is starting now, with additional medical and observation unit beds funded for 2004-05. All of this is only the start.

There are issues in our hospital system, and the ACT government is fixing them. But at all times the people of the ACT and the region can be assured that their public hospital systems will continue to provide high-quality care and that all in need of urgent care get that care when they need it, no matter what the politicking is from those on the other side of this place.

MRS DUNNE (4.32): Mr Speaker, the Minister for Health began his speech by saying that the ACT has the finest public hospital system in the country. If that’s so—and from time to time I’ve had cause to visit other public hospitals and to some extent that’s true—we don’t rest on our laurels. We don’t rest on our laurels, Mr Speaker, and say because our system is less worse than anybody else’s we should be satisfied.

Should we be satisfied, Mr Speaker, when our hospital goes on bypass? Should we be satisfied, Mr Speaker, when our maternity ward goes on bypass? I think it didn’t happen in your time; I know it didn’t happen in Mr Moore’s or Mrs Carnell’s time. Just imagine it, Mr Speaker: “Just cross your legs, dear, and keep breathing and we’ll take you somewhere else.” An absolutely preposterous situation when, in the national capital, the major maternity ward goes on bypass! This is a disgrace, and it is no defence to say, “We’re not as badly off as they are elsewhere.”

I did have the misfortune, I suppose, Mr Speaker, last year when I had to go to Sydney for some private reasons, of being smitten with an onset of a medical condition. I did a comparison of emergency rooms across Sydney on that weekend. I visited Liverpool Hospital’s emergency room and St Vincent’s Hospital’s emergency room. They’re not pretty sights, Mr Speaker, I can assure you. But Canberra Hospital or Calvary Hospital on a Saturday night is just as fraught and is just as nasty a place to be. We have a responsibility to the people of the ACT to have better and not to just say, “Well, you could be worse off; you could be at Liverpool Hospital.”

Mr Speaker, this government walks around puffing out its chest and says, “We’ve spent more money on this; we’ve done this; we’ve done that,” but the clear message is that what you get under this government is lots of money spent and nothing to show for the results. When things get too close to the bone, you have this Minister for Health stand up here and twist, bob and weave and make assertions about what members on this side have said, which are not the case. Mr Corbell claimed, when he stood up here, that Mr Smyth had claimed that when we were on bypass category 1 patients did not receive services. No-one in the opposition has ever said that. It is untrue. Mr Corbell needs to correct the record. He made representations that we were saying that category 1 surgery patients were not receiving treatment when they needed it. The opposition has never said that, Mr Speaker.

Let us address the issues as they are. Let us not try to shift the goalposts. What’s happening here is that we have an under-performing minister who is under pressure. This is an under-performing minister, and what we have seen over the time of his stewardship of this department, the department of health, and this public hospital is a disgrace.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .