Page 772 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 2010
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Canberra Hospital that went nowhere—or if they did, the minister and the acting chief executive are denying that they went anywhere. That is the response.
We now hear from the minister—I will paraphrase, because I have not got the exact quote from Hansard—that it is silly to suggest that a review would sort it out. Not only is she ignoring the complaints and saying that nothing has gone wrong before—and we know it has—but she has got the audacity in this chamber to say that you would be silly to suggest that a review is going to sort it out. Why are we having the review then? Why is she having the review that she is going to put forward if she knows that nothing is going to happen—just like nothing happened last time?
While we had doctors resigning en masse over the period from 2005 up until 2010, where we find ourselves now—we have all these doctors resigning—and we have all these serious complaints being made, what do we have? We have a minister who is denying, who is refusing to take responsibility, who refuses to have an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, an inquiry that is necessary to stop what has been occurring: systemic failures for 10 years now. What we find is that she says, “No, I am going to have a review, but let me tell you that you would be silly to suggest a review to sort it out.”
I wonder why we have so many problems in our health system. If that is the attitude of the Minister of Health—if that is her attitude, her disregard, her failure to accept responsibility—no wonder.
She has been using some military analogies. She has been talking about a 10-year war in obstetrics. She talked about conflict and the definition of war. I will give her one: she should be court-martialled. If this is her response, if this is the way that she is going to conduct her responsibilities as the minister, the response is that she should be court-martialled. There is an analogy that I would consider appropriate.
I do not consider these incidents in obstetrics to be isolated. I have received numerous complaints in my office from people fearful of making complaints through the complaints system. I think we now understand exactly why that may be the case. We know that we have had allegations; we know we have got evidence. We have seen what has happened. We have women who have miscarried in emergency department toilets five days after they have been told that they have already lost their baby. Just imagine. That is an outrageous thing to have occurred.
We had mothers and babies exposed to tuberculosis in the hospital wards and then given treatment. And then—very, very tragically—one of the babies, young DJ Franco-Gill, passed on after the mother had taken him to the hospital, expressing her concern about the state of health of her young baby, and was told by the hospital staff to go home. This is the subject of a coronial inquest, but how tragic that then, so shortly afterwards, the baby was sent the bill for the tests for TB. The hospital infected—or put the child at risk of infection, then put it on an extremely demanding regime—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Point of order.
MR HANSON: Stop the clock, please.
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