Page 3014 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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MRS BURKE: Absolutely, Mr Mulcahy. It has been acknowledged now in this chamber and more publicly. It is important that the people of Canberra can have faith in our public hospital system. They need to see successful outcomes when they visit the emergency department or have elective surgery or, more lately, have oral and maxillofacial surgery.
On 9 October 2007, the Chief Minister said:
There are clinical issues and staffing and systemic issues that we need to address—investigate closely … These are the processes we need to go through. To get bogged down in a deep debate about, oh well, this is about bed numbers or money really belies perhaps some of the systemic issues that need to be investigated.
We totally concur with those comments. These comments actually go to the heart of my reasons for wanting to establish hospital boards in the ACT, in particular a board to oversee the running of the Canberra Hospital.
We can learn from past challenges. This bill is about trying to reverse the gradual decline in the overall management of the public hospital system here in the ACT, in particular at the Canberra Hospital. The Chief Minister and the Acting Minister for Health have now openly acknowledged the many problems that have emerged. The Canberra Hospital caters for around 520,000 people in the ACT and our region. They deserve better than to be constantly faced with systemic problems that are now threatening the very fibre of our hospitals and, worse still, threatening lives.
The current minister has been quoted as saying that “ACT hospitals had an independent board system in the 1990s but it was abolished because it did not work”. That is a total distortion of the facts. Let us have the facts. The fact is that Jon Stanhope abolished the board in 2002. Why? It is because he is an ideologue. His ideology opposed independence, and he also obviously wants his government and his health minister, Katy Gallagher, to be as far away from the coalface as they possibly can be. Who will they put on the front line—a senior bureaucrat? Now, that is brave.
The Chief Minister and the current health minister, Katy Gallagher, would rather let these bureaucrats take the fall for their inability to lead and manage. Jon Stanhope imposed a bureaucratic regime on the then Woden Valley Hospital, which ever since has proved to be a cumbersome disaster, wreaking havoc on helpless staff, from nurses right through to ancillary and auxiliary staff, and patients.
We are not just talking about the dedicated medical staff, surgeons, general practitioners, pathologists, VMOs and the like. We are talking about the very dedicated nurses that we all acknowledge in this place—the wardsmen, emergency support staff and administrators. These many ancillary staff contribute to the fine web that makes up an efficient functioning public facility. Sadly, the management is letting every one of these people down at every level. Of course, they are not just going to throw their hands up and run off.
Since Jon Stanhope stamped his ideology and bias on the system more than five years ago, there has been an unprecedented increase in waiting times, waiting lists for
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