Page 2164 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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system in the world that actually lost money for the taxpayers. But it is a demonstration of where the priorities of this government are when they are focusing on gouging money out of patients and visitors on a Sunday afternoon. I think pay parking arrangements applied until 8 o’clock on a Sunday.
It is extraordinary that someone in the department—and obviously the minister at some stage agreed with it because she would have signed off on it—thought that it was a reasonable thing that, for traffic management purposes, patients and visitors should be required to pay for parking at a hospital in Canberra on a Sunday evening when they would not be required to do so anywhere else. We know there are no traffic management issues on a Sunday afternoon or a Sunday evening. It is extraordinary that this government, in a short -term grab for cash, actually charged people to park at that time. It says a bit about the judgement of this minister that she thought that that was a reasonable approach. In the end, that short-term cash grab, that mean-spirited approach to managing the hospital, actually backfired; it was not a short-term cash grab but was actually a short-term loss. More was spent on implementing the pay parking system than was ever gathered in revenue.
That provides a little snapshot of where the government’s focus has been. Instead of improving patient outcomes, instead of seeing waiting lists go from the bottom of the pile, or the worst in the country to the best in the country, we have seen a focus on actually punishing visitors to the hospital and punishing patients. Perhaps when the minister gets up to talk on this item she can explain to us—because she has not done so yet—why, if the argument was that pay parking was needed for traffic management in and around the hospital, was it needed on Saturday and Sunday, when, in the vast majority of places in Canberra, you would not pay for parking at that time.
I cannot think of anywhere in Canberra where, on a Sunday afternoon, you would actually have to pay for parking. I cannot ever recall going to the hospital on the weekend and there being overflowing car parks. It simply is not the case. It was a cash grab; it was short-sighted, and it demonstrates where some of the priorities of this government have been. We see that, despite all of the extra spending, despite all of the extra money that has been spent over the past few years, some of our indicators are still amongst the worst in the country, particularly elective surgery waiting times and waiting lists.
These are the issues that need to be addressed; these are some of the key indicators that need to be addressed. We do acknowledge there are some positive measures in the health budget; there is no doubt about that. There is much in this that we would support. As I said before, we certainly do not claim that there are not absolutely top-notch parts to the ACT health system and that parts of our performance in our hospitals are excellent. But we have to hold this government to account, and it is clear that on some of the key indicators we are still lagging behind. That should not be the case for the national capital. We should be at the forefront in all of those key indicators; Canberrans expect that.
This is a time of amazing revenue; this government has been swimming in revenue from a number of sources, not just from property sales but from conveyancing, from GST and from a whole host of increased taxes and charges. Given that, we would expect to have the best health system in the country. That, unfortunately, is still not
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