Page 1836 - Week 05 - Thursday, 10 May 2018
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That is from David Smith. If he wants to borrow more of our material, we are more than happy for him to do it.
Australian Medical Association ACT
Answers to questions on notice—costs
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.03): Last night I had the singular pleasure of addressing the annual general meeting of the ACT branch of the AMA, and I want to take this opportunity to put on record my appreciation to the outgoing president, Steve Robson, for the fantastic work that he has done in service to medicine in the ACT, not just through his presidency of the AMA but through his work in his specialised field of obstetrics and gynaecology, the research work that he has done and also in his role as the chair of the college of obstetricians and gynaecologists.
The AMA provides important services to medical practitioners in the ACT. Perhaps they could be construed as a union, but they act in a very professional way and provide a range of professional services to medical practitioners and have considered and strong views about the state of health in the ACT, which I will not go into now. Dr Steve Robson has just concluded his term as the president of the AMA and his role is being taken over by Dr Antonio di Dio, a GP from Yarralumla. I know that Antonio recognises that he has big shoes to fill, following on from the work that has been done by Steve Robson.
I also want to draw to members’ attention Dr Ailene Fitzgerald, who won an award last night for outstanding contribution to health services in the ACT. Dr Fitzgerald is a trauma surgeon and has pioneered the introduction of a new modality of treatment for surgical trauma in the ACT. I received representations from the college of surgeons some time ago, which I passed on to the minister, and I am glad to see that this model of care has eventually been adopted. The ACT college of surgeons were very concerned that a lot of work done had been done in changing the mode of service for trauma surgery, but it was taking a long time to get approval through ACT Health. I am glad to see that that has finally happened.
On a couple of other health-related matters, and also to pick up on a theme that Ms Le Couteur raised in question time earlier this week, there is the new habit of costing out answers to questions on notice. When this first appeared on answers to questions on notice that I received from the Minister for Health, being the sort of person I am, I decided that I would ask a question on notice about the motivation for this. I got a quite succinct answer back from the minister which covers most of the issues that were covered by the Chief Minister in answer to Ms Le Couteur the other day.
I am pleased to tell members that the answer to that question took 30 minutes to complete and cost approximately $65, and it is about half a page of text. I was surprised, in the same batch of questions, to receive a question that took 1,530 minutes to complete, at an approximate cost of $2,296. For those not as arithmetically inclined as we should be, that is $2,296 for 25½ hours of work. There were five questions, which were: how many communications staff are employed in
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