Page 3329 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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Back in November 2000, after the deaths of people in the care of disability services, Mr Stanhope argued for an inquiry into “service quality, service monitoring and accountability, consumer protection and resource allocation”. He was most adamant that there was “no cogent argument to suggest that the coroner cannot go off and do his duty, and that this Assembly cannot initiate an inquiry into all those other issues that are vital in an assessment of the extent to which disability services are being appropriately delivered in this city, for the people of Canberra.” That is what he said. All you need to do is remove the words “disability services” and replace them with “the public hospital system” and the situation is the same today.
I am pointing to Mr Stanhope’s comments in November 2000 because the government has stated already that there is no need to run a coronial inquest side by side with the wider inquiry the opposition is calling for. What nonsense! It goes against everything it said in opposition. This is in no way to impugn the investigation of the coroner, but rather to highlight the breadth of the community’s concerns about the state of the public hospital system in the ACT.
Let me quote Mr Stanhope again, from page 3,406 of Hansard in November 2000. In calling for an inquiry which subsequently became the famous Gallop inquiry, he stated:
It is a nonsense to suggest that we cannot initiate an inquiry into the systemic issues in relation to the delivery of disability services and care because there is a coronial inquiry currently proceeding in relation to some deaths of people in very sad circumstances while they were in care. It is just a nonsense to me.
Mr Speaker, let me tell you that it is equally a nonsense to me if we cannot have an inquiry into our public hospital system at the same time as this coronial inquiry into the sad death of Mr Osterberg. It is also a nonsense to me if the government turns around now and does not support this inquiry.
The purpose of an inquiry into our public hospital system is clear. It is not to satisfy Ms Gallagher that the public hospital system is functioning as it should. It is to satisfy the people of Canberra and the people of the ACT who pay through their taxes for a public hospital system and who have every right to expect the highest level of care in that system—just as they did in relation to disability services with the Gallop inquiry.
If the public hospital system is as good as the health minister and the Chief Minister would like us to believe, with maybe a few little hiccups here and there, then, on the basis of what the Chief Minister said when he was opposition leader, in initiating the Gallop inquiry the government should have no compunction about laying bare the management of our public hospitals for all to see. But if—as the opposition has maintained on the basis of external reports, the testimonies of nursing staff, patient and family complaints, and statements by doctors and others—the management of our public hospital system in the ACT is not so good, the government is not likely to want to put its dirty linen on show.
I remind the government and the health minister that lives are at stake, and at least one has been lost in extremely sad circumstances where timely care and treatment may not
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