Page 4755 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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Mrs Dunne interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne.
Mr Gentleman: A point of order, Madam Speaker.
MADAM SPEAKER: Resume your seat.
Mr Gentleman: Interjections are unparliamentary. We have seen Mrs Dunne interject twice during the last question to the previous minister. She has interjected again. She is on a warning for interjections. I would ask that you call her to order.
Mr Hanson: On the point of order, Madam Speaker—
MADAM SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hanson.
Mr Hanson: Mrs Dunne asked her question. There was no point of order while she was asking the question. You did not raise a problem with it. The minister has not been directly relevant to answering and has wandered off on a tangent. I ask her to be directly relevant to answering Mrs Dunne’s question.
MADAM SPEAKER: I was on the verge of calling Mrs Dunne to be succinct in her single supplementary question. Let us get back to the clock and get back to the minister’s response.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Older patients, of course, do matter. All patients in our health system are extremely important to Canberra Health Services, which strives to provide excellent quality care across the entire system for every single patient, and to support their families and carers in the process.
Clinical need is the primary driver of decisions about when surgeries have to be postponed or rescheduled. Certainly, I will take on notice to see whether I can provide any further information to Mrs Dunne about any other considerations that may be made in relation to specific patient circumstances above clinical need, in making those decisions.
MR HANSON: Minister, when are you going to start recording and publishing surgery cancellation statistics? If you are not going to do that, why not?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Hanson for the question. Of course, we publish a lot of data in relation to the operation of Canberra Health Services and the ACT health system through a range of measures, not just our own quarterly reporting and annual reporting. Of course, we report through the Productivity Commission and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare—
Mr Hanson: Madam Speaker, on a point of order on relevance.
MADAM SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hanson.
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