Page 3116 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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We have heard and have talked in this place about patients having turned up for surgery with broken limbs and been turned away after fasting. Then they come back a day later and get turned away after fasting, and then turn up the next day and are turned away after fasting. That is disgraceful. When I have asked this government to report on timeliness and to report on these things, they refuse to do so. They refuse to do so under this minister, Simon Corbell, who Ms Fitzharris thinks is so wonderful that his faction has dumped him.
We know that we have dangerously high bed occupancy and overcrowding of the Canberra Hospital. In fact the head of the emergency department described the hospital as dangerous. We know the AMA say that anything over 85 per cent is dangerous, and we know that this hospital regularly runs well over that and has been full on a number of occasions.
We have heard of the bullying. We know there are two areas with significant problems with accreditation—urology and obstetrics—and we know it has got so crook that the new director-general has come in and clearly had a look around and gone, “What is going on?” Shortly after her arrival there is now a review that has been instigated into the toxic culture within the Health Directorate—a review, I understand being conducted by KPMG, that was meant to have been released. Surprise, surprise, would you believe it, there is a health report into toxic culture about bullying that is promised to be released by the government, and they have not released it? We have been here once or twice before in our time.
We have heard of the walk-in centres. The initial walk-in centre was at the Canberra Hospital. We had the minister at the time coming out and saying, “This is part of the solution for the emergency department,” when the advice from her own directorate in the strategic emergency department plan said, “Don’t say this will be a solution to waiting times at the emergency department; it will have the reverse effect.” Indeed it did. It actually caused more problems at the ED. We now have two. Go back to your election promise in 2008. Katy Gallagher promised three. Where is the third? Where is the third that you promised, that Labor promised, we would have? Yet again, it is another broken promise.
There is much that needs to be done in this health system and there is much that is not being done. We have the two most expensive hospitals per capita in Australia. If they were running at just average costs our health system would have tens of millions, literally tens of millions, to reinvest into health. If we were to be as efficient as some of the more effective and efficient peer group hospitals across Australia, if we could get it down to the level of some that are the most efficient, we would have hundreds of millions to reinvest, hundreds of nurses, many, many more procedures. Timeliness would go through the roof.
Let me be very clear that while this government wants to congratulate themselves and this minister, Simon Corbell, if you are a patient reporting to the worst response to treatment in Australia, as we have at Canberra Hospital in the emergency department, if you are a staff member who is not even allowed a cup of tea and is working an enormous amount of overtime because of staff shortages, you are not happy. And let me tell you, there is much more to be done.
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