Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak today in this grievance debate. A wave of sickness is sweeping the state of Queensland. It is not a virus or some mystery illness affecting the state but an ailing health system that needs resuscitation.

We were once known around the world for our beaches and sensational weather. These days Queensland is making national and international headlines for the very wrong reasons: a chaotic and crumbling state health system; unqualified and fraudulent doctors; overworked medicos fleeing the system; dying patients stuck on 10-year waiting lists; emergency wards closing across the state; mental health escapees; firefighters and police officers having to moonlight as paramedics; systemic bullying—and the list goes on and on.

The appalling state of the public health system continues to worsen while Labor Premier Beattie continues to declare it as world-class. Do world-class health systems have emergency wards closing every few weeks? Do they leave patients stranded and hours away from medical treatment?

On the day that the Caboolture hospital emergency department was forced to shuts its doors last month, an out-of-control vehicle ploughed into a gully within sights of the hospital grounds. Sadly, an elderly woman was killed and a critically injured passenger had to endure an agonising 40-minute ambulance trip to the already overstretched Redcliffe hospital in my electorate of Petrie, after having driven straight past the empty Caboolture emergency ward. According to the statistics, from July to December 2005 Caboolture hospital treated four life-threatening cases per week and 10 emergency illnesses or injury cases per day. That is an extra 74 cases a week that have to be farmed out to neighbouring hospitals. That incident is not just a tragedy but a shameful indictment on the Beattie Labor government. Unnecessary pain and additional grief was suffered by the families of the two victims because of this ludicrous situation. The media coverage that followed that incident was nothing short of a disgrace.

It does not end there. Some people have to uproot their families and, in some cases, sell their homes because they no longer have 24-hour access to an emergency centre. One distraught parent of a seriously ill child with cystic fibrosis told of the heart-rending decision to move from their family home, five minutes from the Caboolture hospital, to Brisbane because she feared that her child would stop breathing and die on the trip to Redcliffe emergency hospital.

To let a smart hospital system degenerate to such a shameful state and to become such a sham—and the people of Queensland are paying dearly for it—is an absolute disgrace. The future of many more emergency departments are still under a cloud across the state, including wards at major regional centres such as Hervey Bay, Rockhampton and Maryborough. Where will these critically ill patients go? They will be dumped on a hospital system already crippled by the strain from the chronic doctor and nurse shortage.

The Queensland Labor government has failed to train and, indeed, retain doctors. But why? Because the system has been mismanaged into chaos. Who wants to work for a Labor run health system that pays the worst, overworks doctors to the point of exhaustion—in some cases up to 48 hours straight on call—punishes medical staff who complain and threatens to gag others who dare blow the whistle on the incompetent? Just last week there were more explosive revelations: hospital waiting lists have now blown out by 347 per cent. Cancer sufferers were forced to travel for over an hour by bus after the Beattie government closed the Gold Coast’s main chemotherapy treatment centre. The deluded Peter Beattie still continues to crow to anyone who listens that Queensland has a world-class health system. This is thoughtlessness and an insult to the survivors of Dr Death, who, incidentally, now faces multiple manslaughter charges. The victims’ long-suffering families have had to endure this terrible episode.

The Beattie Labor government has the temerity to blame the federal government for its own astonishing mismanagement. Labor has taken to spending taxpayers’ money on full-page newspaper advertisements around the country, trying to blame the federal government for the critical doctor shortage. It seems that everyone else is to blame, and Mr Beattie is always pointing the finger at the Commonwealth for not training enough doctors. I have news for you, Mr Beattie: under the federal government 150 new general practitioner places were being provided each year, an increase of a third. The number of federally funded first-year medical students has almost doubled since 1996 in Queensland, and since 2000 five new medical schools have been established, the bulk of which have received millions of dollars from the federal government in support. There have been new medical schools at James Cook University in Townsville and Griffith University in Brisbane, and a new private medical school opened in 2005 at Bond University in Queensland. Also, the University of Notre Dame Australia medical school recently opened in Western Australia. New medical schools will also be established at the University of Western Sydney, the University of Wollongong and the east coast campus of the University of Notre Dame in Sydney in a couple of years.

The federal government has changed the requirement in the training and accreditation of overseas doctors, particularly in light of the Dr Death inquiry. A secret 2003 report by Queensland Health’s medical adviser for rural health services found a growing number of ill-qualified foreign doctors were being rushed into service, putting patients, employers and the community at risk. There are over 1,200 overseas-trained doctors working in the state, most under special provisions. An Afghani doctor working in North Queensland’s public hospital system could not speak English and was also deaf. In Townsville another so-called doctor was hired as a psychiatric specialist. Despite never having been trained in medicine, he was given a free hand in treating and prescribing drugs to psychotic and mentally ill patients.

After the Queensland opposition exposed the scandal surrounding Dr Patel, who is linked to the deaths of 13 patients at Bundaberg hospital, new stringent rules on the employment of overseas-trained doctors were enforced. The state medical board recently decided that it will allow foreign doctors to work before their degree has been verified. The Labor government has betrayed its promise to protect Queenslanders from yet another Dr Death situation. This is a short-term bandaid solution, and it is a self-inflicted doctor shortage.

In response, the Commonwealth government has tightened its requirements. The maximum visa validity period for temporary resident doctors in the subclass 422 visa was extended from two to four years in December 2003. Since then 1,860 temporary resident doctors have been granted a visa for greater than two years. It is important that we ensure that overseas-trained doctors are placed in areas of workplace shortage. As a result of that, the Australian government has conducted great recruitment activities, and another 88 doctors have signed employment contracts and will commence soon.

There are many reasons why we are having problems in Queensland. The public health system is rotten to the core. Last year, in a letter to the Prime Minister, Premier Beattie even had the temerity to blame the crisis on the Queensland people. I quote from the letter, which indicates that the Queensland Health Systems Review found the service ‘is experiencing unprecedented demand pressures and showing signs of strain and in some cases failing’. Apparently too many of us are having children or daring to move to Queensland and to populate the state. Again I quote from Premier Beattie’s letter from September 2005:

The current Commonwealth Government policy initiatives designed to encourage private health insurance have contributed to the growth in the number of services provided in Queensland private hospitals ... which has seen the public sector losing increasing numbers of doctors in private practice ...

If responsible management practices had been established in the first place, the Labor government would never have been in the situation where doctors were fleeing a disastrous situation in the Queensland health system. I ask Mr Beattie to work more fully with the federal government towards maintaining a good health system, instead of wearing yellow ribbons and conducting patronage and tacky tactics.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted and I put the question:

That grievances be noted.

Question agreed to.