Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with many of the comments that have just been made by the member for Chisholm. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the terrible humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Sri Lanka at the moment and the plight of many Tamils as they remain in military controlled camps. I would also like to associate myself with those comments that stress the need for a continuing humanitarian approach to issues to do with asylum seekers. I thank the member for Chisholm for those comments.

This evening I rise to speak in particular about the sick and sorry state of Australia’s health system and about the government’s inaction in addressing the problem specifically in our public health sector. Before I continue, I would just like to acknowledge the many men and women who work in the health sector today. Having been the recipient of care from time to time, I cannot speak highly enough about the work of individuals within our health system. When one seeks these services, it is evident that many of the staff are very overworked and that they work in very stressful situations. It is a shame that after almost two years in office, and after many promises about reforming the public health sector, and particularly hospitals, we have seen the government actually move money away from crucial areas of the health portfolio. The promised reform of the hospital system has not eventuated, but we have seen plenty of wasteful programs as a result of knee-jerk reactions to the global financial crisis. One would not want to pretend that there was not a situation to be addressed, but I do think some of these programs have been put in place in haste and that the public moneys have been badly mismanaged—money that could have gone into health programs.

Health is the one area where money can least afford to be cut, but attempts to appeal to everyone by the Prime Minister have seen money cut from essential health programs. This is a huge concern, not just from my perspective but from the perspective of people in the electorate of Pearce. It was evident in the results of a survey that I recently conducted electorate wide which asked people what issues were most important to them. The responses overwhelmingly nominated health and the fixing of our hospitals as the No. 1 priority in the electorate. Unfortunately, as shown in the Australian Medical Association’s recently released public hospital report card, the performance of Australia’s public hospital system continues to deteriorate and people still experience excessive waits in emergency departments and excessive waits for admission to a hospital bed.

The issue of capacity is a very important one. Bed ratios have been cut by more than 67 per cent since the late 1960s and by more than half since the start of Medicare in 1984-85. Advances in medical care and technology have reduced the average length of stay in hospital, while the private system has also picked up more of the load. However, the cut in bed numbers has been too deep and, with an ageing population and growing complexity of caring for this population, improving public hospital capacity is vital. In analysing the results of our electorate wide survey, we found a majority of people who identified the health system as a priority were over the age of 55 years. This shows that the public are looking to plan for their future. As members of parliament, we should be pre-empting the changes that society needs and legislating accordingly. I suppose in some ways this age demographic reflects our ageing population and the growing numbers of people in this age category, and that is not going to change any time soon.

The performance of the public health system is ultimately what it is judged on. Data provided by the Australian Medical Association shows that there is great room for improvement in this area. In June 2009 the Road Trauma and Emergency Medicine Unit at the Australian National University repeated its access block prevalence survey in which it surveyed 79 Australian public hospitals in all states and territories. At the time of the survey one-third of patients under the care of emergency departments were waiting for admission to wards. Of those patients, 70 per cent had been waiting more than eight hours. In 22 hospitals there were 44 patients who had been waiting more than 24 hours.

Unfortunately, this is not getting better in the rural and regional areas of Australia—areas of which there are many in the Pearce electorate. I have firsthand heard of the many horror stories from constituents who have tried to be admitted to emergency departments in rural areas. However, often there are greater problems in these areas in accessing specialist services. This is a fact acknowledged by the Rural Doctors Association of Australia, a body that has worked tirelessly to try to improve government responses to rural health over at least a decade and probably beyond.

Rural populations have the right to a level of health care equal to that available to their urban counterparts. In reality, as the Rural Doctors Association of Australia state in a 2009 paper, The value of local specialist medical services to rural Australia:

In reality, this depends on the number of specialists and other health professionals in the community and the workload they are expected to carry.

I think we all understand that it is not possible for public hospitals, whether they be urban or rural environments, to achieve short waiting lists all the time, but a commitment needs to be made to better resourcing public emergency departments as well as an increase in inpatient beds.

The Prime Minister promised to fix the hospitals by June this year. After two years we are yet to see him deliver in this area. Western Australia’s emergency department waiting time performance for category 3 patients has been in steep decline over the last three years and, at 49 per cent, is totally unacceptable. I would remind members of this House that up until fairly recently Western Australia did have a Labor government.

It reminds me of an article that I saw in the Courier-Mail on Tuesday, 8 September, where doctors in Queensland were encouraged to drink coffee to beat fatigue. The Courier-Mail reported the confessions of junior surgeons and medics whose exhaustion-induced errors had killed or hurt patients during on-call shifts of 30 to 80 hours. This is patently ridiculous. I think we are just asking too much of some of our medical profession. Certainly in the rural areas many of our doctors suffer burnout. It is very difficult to keep medical doctors in those areas. Many of the hospitals have been closed, putting additional pressures on GPs. But to return to the issue of burnout, a guideline document underpinning Queensland Health’s fatigue risk management system claims:

… solutions such as ‘we need more staff’ might not be achievable or effective in managing a fatigue risk.

Instead, the 102-page document deems the strategic use of caffeine to be beneficial as a fatigue fighter for doctors on marathon duties. Does this sound like a health system that is working properly? I think not. Often in these cases doctors and hospital staff are doing the best they can, and the best outcome achievable for the patient is always at the forefront of their minds. This becomes more and more difficult when they are placed under such enormous pressure to try to meet the expectations of the public. All the public really wants is access to affordable and equitable care. However, as the public hospital report card states:

When public patients are obliged to wait—for years in some cases—for a necessary procedure, it is no longer possible for governments to claim that access to health care is equitable.

Long waits for access to care impair quality of life, reduce workforce productivity and reduce the contributions that older Australians can make to the community.

A person’s health impacts on all aspects of their life. If they are unhealthy, they cannot work and contribute fully to society. They cannot volunteer with their community groups. They cannot be involved in recreation activities and they cannot be available for their families and children. For women, maternal health is probably one of the most important or pressing issues that we have to deal with within our society, particularly in Indigenous communities. Put simply, if our health system does not function properly then society cannot reach its full potential. Currently, the system is understaffed and underfunded. (Time expired)