Page 1523 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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territory in a particularly impressive light, certainly not of the standard that people in this city expect.
We pride ourselves on the education here, the income level, the capacity of people, the success, our low unemployment, and our booming economic performance, due in no small part to the federal government’s generosity to the territory. We should have a health care system that equates with that level of expectation and that standard of service. Regrettably, we do not. There are so many stories that come back to me and, I know, other members that cause concern. One of my own staff took his daughter to hospital the other night and it was in the order of 15 hours before a medical practitioner was to see that little child, who was suffering from respiratory problems. They came to the hospital in the morning. In the afternoon they were sent to another part of the hospital and told that a doctor would see them. It was the next day before a doctor saw the six-year-old child. That is not a one-off example. Many members, of course, have examples that they hear about from constituents. That is just one out of my own office with one of my staff trying to ensure that his daughter received the appropriate level of medical care.
I have a neighbour who went in at Christmas and there was no one available to do surgery, other than a locum, and the locum did not want to do it. Then there was a misdiagnosis. That man has not been able to work a full week in the past six months, and he is one of Canberra’s leading medical specialists. I am horrified each week when I see him because he is a man who suffered enormously from his experience there. I am not going to mention names, but it is no great secret to my colleagues who I am talking about and it worries me that the health system in this territory is not meeting the standards and expectations that people rightfully expect, that my constituents expect.
The AIHW report showed that Canberrans waiting for elective surgery in ACT public hospitals faced the longest waiting times in Australia. As Mr Smyth pointed out, the patients needing elective surgery waited for a median of 61 days in 2005-06, compared to the 45 days wait in 2004-05. Jest was made of the fact that I cited the 25-day wait in Queensland. It was trivialised. There was a dreadful response from the Chief Minister, who said, “The Liberals want Dr Death.” What a shameful comment when we are asking for decent health care for our citizens, particularly in the orthopaedic area, where a lot of the older people in Canberra are needing hip replacements and the like. We have a critical shortage of orthopaedic specialists. We are asking for those people to get faster treatment and we are told, “What, you want it to be like Queensland, you want Dr Death on the loose in the place!”
I take offence at that, Mr Speaker, because members on this side of the chamber take the matter of public health as a matter of very high priority, probably the most important part of this territory’s budget. The government says it is. They are putting $800 million plus into this budget. Let’s make sure that we are getting the level of service that the people of this city expect of us and let’s not be contemptuous when another state is able to manage its elective surgery processes in a far more expeditious fashion than we have achieved. Any form of surgery which a patient’s doctor or health professional believes to be necessary but which can be delayed by at least 24 hours fits into the definition of elective surgery. This is surgery the patients’
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