Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1)notes that:

(a)the Tasmanian public health system is fundamentally broken and that is directly resulting in prolonged illnesses and avoidable deaths;

(b)this dire situation is despite the Tasmanian health system receiving more funding from the Commonwealth Government than the national average;

(c)independent Tasmanian public policy analyst Martyn Goddard estimates that, since the Tasmanian Government came to power in 2014, health and hospitals have been short-changed by $2 billion of GST money being diverted from Tasmania’s public health system;

(d)Tasmanian hospitals are the worst-performing in the country, despite heroic efforts from staff;

(e)the latest state government figures show that 11,342 people are waiting for elective surgery—the most urgent category one patients, who should be treated in 30 days, have to wait an average of 130 days for their procedure;

(f)mental health services are another significant area of chronic under-investment, resulting in poorly treated and untreated illnesses causing great suffering and sometimes suicides; and

(g)there is precedence for the Commonwealth Government to intervene in the Tasmanian health system, for instance the take-over and hand-back of the Mersey Hospital; and

(2)calls on the Commonwealth Government to refer Tasmania’s failing health system to the Productivity Commission to:

(a)conduct a public inquiry to identify the root causes of Tasmania’s failing health system; and

(b)formulate a solution to fix the systemic and cultural problems within the Tasmanian health system.

Regrettably, there is an urgent need for federal intervention in Tasmania's ailing public health system and, in particular, there's an urgent need for the federal government to direct the federal Productivity Commission to do a review of Tasmania's public health system and to help Tasmania by laying out a blueprint for reform. That's not to say that a string of Tasmanian governments haven't conducted audit inquiries, spent money, put bandaids on or done different things to try to fix Tasmania's public health system, but regrettably none of it has worked. Indeed, it has now become commonplace for emergency department doctors and nurses at the Royal Hobart Hospital to warn how bed block and the ramping of ambulances is disrupting quality health care and even resulting in unnecessary deaths. To illustrate this point: last fiscal year in Tasmania over 1,800 patients waited over 24 hours just to be seen in the emergency department. No wonder the AMA is also cautioning about this situation. The AMA notes that waiting lists for elective surgery at the Royal Hobart Hospital are now the worst in over 20 years.

We don't need to go to organisations like that to get a sense of things; we could just look at the state government's own figures. Indeed, by the state government's latest figures there are 11,342 patients on the elective surgery waiting list. That's out of a total population of only half a million people for the whole state; 11,342 Tasmanians on the elective surgery waiting list. Remarkably, those who are on the category 1 waiting list are waiting, on average, 130 days for their surgery, when the clinically recommended waiting time is to be no more than 30 days.

They're numbers, but remember that behind all these numbers are human stories. For example, the elderly man, a constituent of mine, who's been waiting for hip surgery for ages and is in so much pain and is so disabled that he needs to call on his neighbours to change his socks. There's nothing elective about that. It's a human tragedy. Or, just last week, the mother of four who contacted my office when, a day before she was scheduled for urgent colon surgery, her surgery was cancelled. This woman can't work, she's in extreme pain, she suffers embarrassing bowel movements and her surgery was cancelled last week, and the state government thinks that's okay.

Mental health is especially problematic. I could give you some shocking demonstrations of just how bad things are, like the man who cut off his finger to ensure he would be admitted to the Royal Hobart Hospital to get the mental health care he was calling out for. Or the example of a man found dead in the bushes outside the Royal Hobart Hospital not that long ago, who had twice been turned away from the hospital when he was desperately calling out for mental health treatment.

The government says it's on the job and all's well, and to his credit last week the Premier did announce $45 million to boost elective surgery. Frankly, it's a bandaid when the public health system has such systemic structural and funding problems. That's why today I'm calling again—I've done it before unsuccessfully—for federal intervention, not to disrupt the Tasmanian public health system but to help the Tasmanian public health system, to get an independent body like the Productivity Commission to go in with all its know-how. It's not unprecedented for federal intervention in Tasmania—for example, Prime Minister Gillard agreed to my request for a $325 million funding boost. And we've had the episode of hospitals being taken over, handed back and all sorts of things. We need the Productivity Commission to step in.

I'll take this opportunity again to call for the closure of one of Tasmania's three northern hospitals. We have three hospitals in the north and one hospital in the south. Three hospitals for half of the population and one hospital for the other half of the population. We have too many hospitals and they are underfunded. I call again on the Tasmanian government to shut one of the three northern hospitals, which would leave three well-funded hospitals instead of four underfunded hospitals. We've got to stop the bandaids. The Tasmanian government has got to look to the feds for help. The community has got to understand that we've got to stop putting bandaids on the public health system. We got to fix it. Until we fix it, people will continue to suffer unnecessarily; people will continue to die unnecessarily.

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