Page 3345 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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We talk about our health system. I have to say that we do not know how well off we are. I have lived in the bush and I know what the service is like for most of Australia. The level of health services for rural Australians is much lower than it is here in the cities. We speak from the relative privilege of being some of the healthiest people in Australia. Let us not forget that. That is the context in which we speak. Hospitals come in at the pointy end when things go wrong. It is not good when they do go wrong, but what we need to do is keep up that level of health. We have an ageing population. More of us will be vulnerable. More of us will get sick, including everyone in here, and then we will have that experience ourselves.
I have had constituents come to me with their concerns about the hospital and at times I think they are valid. Very frequently I think they are valid, but at other times I think, “How much do you want?” How much do we expect? Our expectations are rising all the time. It is a good thing that we expect the best, but it is making us more and more critical. This is a fine balance that the minister and the government are working on. I would like to see more accountability. I am not very happy to hear that Ms Gallagher is not going to answer any more of the opposition’s questions. I can understand her frustration and why she has taken that position, but I think it is a bad decision. I ask her to reconsider because it opens the government to charges of a lack of transparency and accountability. It might be annoying. I know the bureaucrats in AusAID felt that there was at least one full-time bureaucrat working for Senator Harradine answering his questions. Nonetheless, that is the kind of government we have.
The balance is being frank about the problems—and I think the government is doing that—but also making sure that the public has confidence in our health system. On the whole I think they can, and it is absolutely vital that they can because unless the hospitals, the doctors and the patients work together we will not have good outcomes.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (12.14), in reply: I think everyone has spoken and I thank members for their contributions. Let me just make a few points in reply to the minister, who categorised this motion as another attack on our system. That is hardly the case. The opposition, indeed the general public, have heard over a period of time real issues raised by doctors and nurses, people at the coalface, people who work there daily who have problems with the system and who want improvements. They include senior doctors like Professor Peter Collignon, who referred to about 30 rooms which should have been for patients being used for administration.
When you hear problems from people like that, you tend to take note. When you hear problems from nurses who have been in the profession for 30 or more years, you tend to take note. When you actually experience yourself things that occur now that did not occur five, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years ago and maybe are not necessarily occurring in similar hospitals around other parts of the country that you have got some knowledge of, then you think that something needs to be done.
The minister said that sometimes the system does not get it right. That is so true. Probably no system is ever going to get it 100 per cent right. She stated, “When something goes wrong, that is when we put things in place to fix it.” That is very
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