Page 2891 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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in fact, closed by the Liberals, was another case of really gilding the lily, because it seems that about only 60 acute beds have been added by this government, There have been other beds added, but only 60 of them had been acute beds. Of course, this government did not have to cope with the $348 million deficit left by the previous government. They inherited a surplus through good management, and good management, might I say, in much more difficult times than these.
This government has had the benefit of rivers of gold from property taxes and from GST and the commonwealth, yet it still cannot manage and it still blames everyone else. Both the Chief Minister and the health minister have conceded that it is not all about money. The health budget is, in fact, $700 million, but this government is simply unable to target it where it is needed. The government has conceded, too, that there are systematic problems in the management of the public hospital system in the ACT, but it said it is competent to fix these. But, ladies and gentlemen, on its track record, I fear that it is not.
The government also blames the lack of GPs in the ACT as being part of the problem. But then, as the opposition revealed last week, we have one local doctor who bulk bills 80 per cent of his patients, and he was told that it would take six to eight months to get a doctor he was hiring from South Africa registered. The committee that was to assess that application had not even been set up. Now that really seems to me to be a bureaucratic stuff up; that seems to be something that would not be terribly difficult to do. It does not seem that these committees are all that difficult to constitute. We heard that, initially, it was not going to take that long; it was something like six to eight weeks. But the doctor was on radio, and he stated that he was told it would then take six to eight months.
We need more doctors; we need to have processes in place where we can get competent, able doctors and nurses into our system as soon as possible. I think this just goes to show that, unfortunately, there is incompetence and excessive bureaucracy at every level of this Labor government under Jon Stanhope. For months the opposition has been revealing the shortcomings in the public hospital system. Indeed, for the next few months we will continue to do so as we will continue to reveal other shortcomings and continue also to put out ideas and, indeed, policies where we actually can see the situation being improved.
For months we have revealed these shortcomings, and for months these have been denied and, indeed, attributed, bizarrely in many, many instances, to the last Liberal government, which, I remind the government, was actually over six years ago now. All we get from this government, in relation to the health area especially, are plans and more plans. They seemed to have turned on its head the notion that if you do not plan you are planning to fail. Their plans fail because they are substitutes for action and for any thorough and genuine attempt to work through the problems and provide real solutions.
You are a government in denial, and I think you are showing you cannot manage. You have become so incompetent in your management that all Canberrans are affected one way or the other for the worse. You need to get your act together: lift your game and do something for the people of the ACT.
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