Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity in the debate while other speakers are arriving to again highlight the impact of this legislation. I really asked Senator Fielding to explain this. The impact of this legislation will be to exacerbate the quite disastrous and critically dangerous situation that exists in hospitals in my state of Queensland. It will throw more and more people onto the public health system. Every day in North Queensland there is another media report of a crisis in Queensland Health. New hospitals were built in Townsville and new hospitals were planned for Cairns and Mackay—but, would you believe, Mr Temporary Chairman, that the number of beds in these new hospitals is considerably fewer than the beds that were available in the old hospitals? The result is now that corridors have become wards for the critically ill. Emergency wards are full of people who really should not be in emergency wards. We even have the situation where ambulances are now ‘ramping’—that is, instead of ambulances being out collecting people, they are parked out the front of the hospital because sick people cannot get a bed in the hospital. People have to stay in the back of an ambulance because there are no beds available in the health system in Queensland.

The Queensland state Labor government has been talking for years now about doing something about this. A month before the last election Mr Beattie announced that in Townsville there would be 100 new beds. As a result of that, all three of the state electorates in the Townsville area were retained by the Labor Party. Of course, four years later, how many beds have been produced? I think there are something like eight additional beds of the 100 promised before the election. This situation continues in the little town of Aramac. The Queensland government just closed the Aramac hospital down. Where do they go? To other hospitals in regional centres. This legislation which we are discussing in committee today will throw more people into those chronically overcrowded health facilities. I am delighted to say congratulations to the people of Aramac because, through a lot of pressure by a lot of people—although I am sure my speeches in this chamber had no influence—the Queensland government reversed its decision and retained the hospital there. Unfortunately, no amount of pressure has been able to stop the Hughenden hospital losing its operating theatre.

These are the sorts of problems we currently have in the health system of Queensland. I suspect that it is much the same right around Australia, but I know it to be the case in Queensland. This legislation will simply throw more and more people onto the health system. I see that Senator Siewert is here and will no doubt want to pursue the amendments that are before the chair. I hope Senator Fielding can tell us what his agreement with the government is going to mean to the hospital system in Queensland. It is already grossly overcrowded, and this sort of legislation will add to that pressure.