Page 420 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 18 March 2014
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MR SMYTH: Minister, why does the Canberra Hospital continue to get worse in this area while other hospitals improve?
MS GALLAGHER: It does not get worse. You are the first mob—the minute you can beat up Canberra Hospital you are in here salivating at the chance of doing so. It is beyond me why you take this approach. If you look at the national average, if you look at the benchmark that is set, Canberra Hospital remains below the benchmark. That is the important measure. When you look at the target for that, Canberra Hospital remains below that target but compared to peer hospitals, it has increased.
That is the issue that has been reported on the MyHospitals website. There has been a small increase against a backdrop of 72,000 cost-weighted separations at a hospital. We have seen an increase from, I think, 33 cases to 41 cases. Each one of those has been examined as to the cause, as to whether there was a systemic failure around that.
I would also say that, under Professor Collignon’s leadership, we also have one of the best testing and tracing regimes in the country. If that makes us look like we are worse than other hospitals, I will wear that in terms of actually driving performance and keeping people focused on the need to have a hospital that is continually looking at ways to improve.
Professor Collignon, as members of the opposition would know, is absolutely unrelenting in his pursuit of this matter. When he tells me that there is not a systemic problem occurring at our hospital, I believe him.
Education—teacher recruitment
MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Education and Training. On 24 February, the Canberra Times reported:
Ms Burch … was conscious of the need to raise the professional status of teachers as well as giving parents confidence that their “sons and daughters are in good hands”.
Minister, what did you mean by those comments?
MS BURCH: I think that what Mr Doszpot has done is taken an extract. I am not quite sure whether it was the announcement of the teachers being in the top 30 per cent of literacy and numeracy, Mr Doszpot. Was it in response to My School? Either way, I am certainly on record as saying that I will do all I can at a policy level in encouraging best practice and the best teachers in front of our students in the classroom to make sure that the families in Canberra have confidence in our system—continue to have confidence in our system—and that we, for whatever measure and however we can, continue to provide the best teachers that we can in front of the sons and daughters of Canberra families.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Doszpot.
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