Page 1604 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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the government. There have been three health ministers in this time, and we are talking about six years, all determined to deliver a multitude of reforms to the system. I would add at this point that it is not just Ross Solly who is wondering whether the Stanhope government are targeting funding as well as they might be. Many people are asking that question and many commentaries have alluded to that fact.
For the 2007-08 budget, I maintain that the latest round of new initiatives are just managing to fill the holes in the dyke. Critical shortages in the emergency department, medical labour costs and increased elective surgery have clearly forced the government, just a year or so out from the next election, to commence a funding frenzy in order to improve our performance as posted against all other jurisdictions and as outlined in the recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reporting on public hospitals. It is worth noting, and we have to keep reminding people of it, that Canberra’s public hospitals, as Mr Mulcahy and others have said, are costing at least $61 million more to run than they should, by the national average.
This is not about cutting back on programs and the government should stop playing semantics and being ridiculous in their statements suggesting otherwise. Administration costs are 26 per cent greater than the average of comparable hospitals, and Canberrans needing elective surgery face the longest wait in Australia. Again, it appears that no matter how much funding is targeted at filling these holes, the government still cannot, in some crucial areas of performance for hospitals, outperform any other jurisdiction in Australia. It is the responsibility of the Stanhope government, and in particular the health minister, to take appropriate action now to correct the situation that, unfortunately, for the past two years has not seen very encouraging figures produced on the performance of Canberra’s public hospitals.
Our record on elective surgery is less than glowing and certainly not desirable. The $10.5 million is desperately needed to provide a real boost in order just to keep up with the demand for elective surgery. If the Stanhope government had not injected funding into elective surgery over four years, those most in need of surgery would have no doubt have continued to wallow on the waiting lists. The opening of a tenth operating theatre at the Canberra Hospital, operating five days a week, must have been needed to conduct more surgery and is indicative of how dire things are in our health system, despite the health minister’s pooh-poohing of any statements to the contrary. That is not surprising, given that the ACT has a 61-day waiting time for elective surgery. I go back to the question: how is it possible for Queensland to manage a 25-day waiting time turnaround?
This injection, designed as a booster to recurrent funding, is catch-up at its best by a government simply delivering rather modest programs. The additional funding being pumped into the system from the latest budget, close to $67 million extra over four years to high-priority areas, is most certainly needed, but the question remains: why have three successive ministers allowed the situation to deteriorate in our hospitals to such an appalling level that the government is now playing catch-up? There are major indicators here that the ACT is not performing well against other jurisdictions and performance and efficiency gains do not seem to be occurring in other areas of the system, such as acute care, labour costs and the emergency department.
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