Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the courtesy, Mr Deputy Speaker. I did not want to take up too much time of the House. I certainly support the legislation that the government is bringing forward, the Health Insurance Amendment (Diagnostic Imaging Accreditation) Bill 2009. I was very interested in the comments about an MRI machine, because in Blacktown, with a population of about 300,000 people, Blacktown Hospital was provided with an MRI machine in the last few years.

I am very impressed with the department at Blacktown. Blacktown Hospital is twinned with Mount Druitt. Radiological and non-radiological services are offered at both campuses. The MRI, I am happy to report, is operating at capacity. We have now started using it on a Saturday. More particularly, we provide a same-day service, so it treats not only those patients who may be in hospital but also patients who are referred to the hospital for an MRI. Of course you would know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that MRIs are a much less invasive form than the traditional X-ray machines and CT machines.

I make no secret of the fact that it would be really good, given that machine now is reaching capacity, if we had an MRI machine at Mount Druitt. What would happen there is that the state government would provide the capital for the purchase of the machine. The federal government provides the licence and, of course, with usage it gets repaid.

Why am I anxious to have it at Mount Druitt? Well, there has been a significant change at Mount Druitt Hospital. It is to become an elective surgery specialist centre of excellence. At the moment we have 1.5 operating theatres—I believe it is only one actually operating—and we have four theatres, one of which was being used as a storeroom. But that has all changed. There is going to be an endoscopy unit provided for Mount Druitt Hospital and, as I say, we certainly hope that non-complicated elective surgery which otherwise would have been performed at Nepean Hospital, Westmead Hospital or other public hospitals will be able to be performed at Mount Druitt.

Judging from the briefing I received, it will be a challenge, I guess, trying to attract some of the doctors to Mount Druitt to do the operations, but they will be able to have guaranteed slots. I think one of the most disappointing aspects of elective surgery is when you are all prepped up ready to go into an operating theatre and you are told, ‘No, sorry; we can’t do it today because there’s an emergency being done ahead of you.’ One of the advantages of having a centre of excellence for elective surgery is that doctors who do their elective surgery there will have guaranteed slots, so patients who front up on Monday, Tuesday or whatever day wanting to have an operation will indeed have an operation.

I know the minister has been very generous in listening to my pleas for an MRI. She explains that she has a whole country to consider when it comes to MRIs. But I think, to be frank, this radical change for the New South Wales health system—going to elective surgery centres of excellence, as we are doing in Mount Druitt—would be immeasurably boosted by the provision of an MRI at Mount Druitt. We do more MRIs at Blacktown Hospital than are done at Nepean or even at Westmead. It is more fully utilised. We will get value for money. The other thing I should say is that it is a very modest fee that the hospital charges to referred patients. From memory, it is in the order of just over $200 for an MRI. But if you go to a private provider you can pay anything upwards of $1,000. So it would be really good for patients if we had it there; certainly the one at Blacktown is really good for patients.

Health is going to be an issue, and I want to finish on this point. I find it very difficult for the opposition to be believed in health when they ripped a billion dollars out of the health system. I know what a catastrophic impact that had just in Western Sydney, and you can replicate that in south-western Sydney as well. Not only did they rip a billion dollars out of the public hospital system but also they froze doctors’ places and they did not provide enough training places for nurses. I put on the public record my deep appreciation of the efforts of the Minister for Health and Ageing. I think she is doing an excellent job; she has inherited a mess and is working her way through it. I think the people of Australia can have confidence in Nicola Roxon as the minister for health, but they can have no confidence in the Leader of the Opposition, because in four years he took the billion dollars out of the public health system, he froze the doctors’ places and he did not provide enough nurses.

Much has been said about hospital boards. I was a foundation deputy chair of Mount Druitt Hospital and am very proud of that association. I used to be driven mad trying to work out budgets. I think back on what happened at Hawkesbury Hospital, which also had a board: they used to routinely blow their budget and always got supplementation to make it up. But there have been really significant and important changes that have occurred between Blacktown and Mount Druitt Hospital that I think a board might not have been able to achieve—for example, Mount Druitt Hospital has the palliative care unit shared between the two hospitals. It has the paediatric ward, which Blacktown does not have. It has rehabilitation that Blacktown does not have. Of course Blacktown has some things that Mount Druitt does not have, but the provision of these services and making them specialties of the hospital has in the long run, I think, continued the hospital and ensured its future.

Frankly, if I look back and think about how we were just a board, I see that it would have been so easy to close Mount Druitt Hospital, because it sits between Nepean Hospital, Blacktown and then Westmead. Whilst I enjoyed my time as a deputy chairman of a hospital, boards do not make up for a lack of money and they do not necessarily contribute to or have the ability to manage the huge changes and costs occurring in the health system. I think people ought to put their faith in the work of the minister for health and, of course, the Prime Minister and our commitments in this area. I commend the bill.

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