Page 3335 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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foot, you are not going to do it, are you? It is an absolutely appalling state of affairs and a travesty in this place that this government just wants to hide away from what is really at the cause of the problems in our public hospital system—that is, systemic management issues. Only an inquiry under the Inquiries Act will reveal that. They know that; the Attorney-General would know that. The Attorney-General knows full well that an inquiry under the Inquiries Act is the only way to get to the bottom of the cause of many of the systemic problems, which the Chief Minister himself identifies.
We have the health minister in this place throwing her arms up in the air. She is totally out of her depth—totally out of her depth. Supposedly she is not now going to answer questions without notice. Since when has that ever happened in this place? We have set a new, all-time low level in this place today. Future and emerging questions around oral maxillofacial surgery need to be asked. They need to be asked for public interest, and I will continue to ask them.
This is a very major area at the Canberra Hospital—a very major area. The minister now stands as good as to say that she cannot stand the heat. She only wants to be portrayed as rosy and lovely and “everybody loves me”. She cannot take the heat. She cannot take the hard questions that come. What do we get from the health minister over this whole issue of hospitals? The hand wringing: “It’s the former Liberal government’s fault,” “No, it’s the commonwealth’s fault.” It is a pathetic response. Given six years of this government and two reports particularly into the oral maxillofacial services area, the Stanhope government has been unable, unwilling or too totally inept to be able to fix the problem.
Unfortunately, very sadly—and Mr Mulcahy alluded to this yesterday—we have a part-time health minister. She is not fully committed to the job; she is unable to be fully committed to the job. I make that quite clear. It is very important that we have a health minister who is on the ball 100 per cent of the time. She is not across this portfolio. She is unaware of the many issues that are bubbling under the surface. She knows nothing about them, and that concerns me. That is why we need an inquiry under the Inquiries Act.
This current health minister—the third in the Stanhope government, let us not forget—is not coping in her role. She is lurching from one disaster to another. In between that, we have this sprinkling of warm and fuzzy announcements in the media. There are no real solutions to addressing the major systemic problems in our public hospital system. That is no more so than at the Canberra Hospital, as the minister herself said yesterday. The constant wailing and moaning—I am absolutely over it. She wails and moans—it is so overdone. There is no credibility left now in what she has to say, and the Canberra community need to know that.
An enormous amount of money is being spent on our public hospitals, but for too long now there have been administrative failings which point to problems with internal government and management practices. There have been various damning external reports, as we all know, and to all of these reports the health minister and the Chief Minister have turned a blind eye. They simply maintain, “There are no real problems. Everything’s fine. We’re doing really well actually, if you really look at some of the good figures.”
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