Page 2173 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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MR MULCAHY: Mr Stanhope’s figures were in fact verified by the Australian commonwealth department of health officials, who said that the territory government was right, that they reconciled very closely, within a fraction, and that the costings provided by you and Mr Smyth were off the money. All I am telling you is that it was an awful mistake, a very expensive mistake, and I am not at all surprised that we have not heard it spruiked of late. But it does tell me that, if this is the approach of the Liberal team, both in terms of ad hoc, on-the-run policy formation and poor costing, then I have little doubt that they would struggle to run a complex public health system.
The people of Canberra deserve better. We deserve better than the longest waiting times in the country and we deserve better opposition than Mrs Burke is able to produce in the area of public health.
I said at the outset that there are some welcome initiatives in this year’s budget. I would also like to take this opportunity to recognise the considerable efforts of front-line medical staff, particularly in the ACT health system. Like Mrs Dunne, there have been occasions—thank God, not so often, as the children have grown up—particularly when my children were younger, when we needed to take advantage of the health system, particularly in emergency situations. The staff clearly are dedicated people, because they simply would not take on that level of pressure and responsibility just for remunerative reasons. But I am also very sensitive and conscious of the fact that many of the staff there do express their frustration about the circumstances under which they are operating, the shortages and various other related matters.
I have to say that initiatives like the women and children’s hospital and the new community healthcare centre at Gungahlin are particularly welcome. Similarly, other investment is also welcome. As I said earlier, we are facing challenges, most particularly an ageing population and ageing infrastructure, and the best way to respond to these is not simply to throw money at these problems; it is to determine the areas that need improvement and then identify state-of-the art systems in those areas where they can be implemented and state-of-the-art management.
I acknowledge that some improvements have been made. However, I also again refer to figures from the AIHW report, as well as the vast weight of anecdotal evidence reflected in constituency correspondence, that show that the people of Canberra are a long way yet to reaching a point where they are comfortable with the standard of our public health system. We are taking some steps in the right direction—I acknowledge that—but I am not sure that we are progressing either rapidly enough or consistently enough to warrant fulsome praise for the government’s performance at this point in the cycle.
Health, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, is one of the most important responsibilities of the ACT government. I am happy to acknowledge some progress in this particular Appropriation Bill. I would, in fairness, say that the volume of complaints that I have received in health areas has gone up overall; but in the area of health—I have not done a statistical analysis—I suspect it has come down in the last 24 months. I am certainly happy to acknowledge some progress in this particular Appropriation Bill. The system we have, though, is not yet at a level that I think is
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