Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on health and hospitals in my region, particularly in my local area of the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury. Blue Mountains residents already travel great distances for essential health services and specialist care, but they could be forced to travel even further under the Rudd Labor government’s health proposal based on casemix funding. The media has now joined with the coalition to hold the government to account on its health standards, after the Sun Herald released its own MyHospital website last week with data compiled from the New South Wales Health Services Comparison Data Book 2007/2008. This is the most recent complete annual data available on all New South Wales hospitals. Results on the MyHospital website clearly show that services to Blue Mountains residents are below the service targets set by the Labor government in New South Wales. If Labor cannot get it right from Sydney, how can they get it right from Canberra?

The Blue Mountains District ANZAC Memorial Hospital in Katoomba is recorded as having only 64 per cent of imminently life-threatening cases seen by a doctor within 10 minutes, but the government’s benchmark is a minimum of 80 per cent. This means that the Blue Mountains hospital is coming in 16 per cent below the government’s acceptable target. As a comparison, the Hawkesbury District Health Service, which is in the same district group 1C1 class as the Blue Mountains hospital, comes in at 96 per cent in the same category. In the category of percentage of potentially life-threatening cases seen by a doctor within 30 minutes—for which the government’s target is 75 per cent—it is bad news again for Blue Mountains residents. Yet again, the hospital comes in at 67 per cent when the Hawkesbury District Health Service—in the same class—weighs in at 96 per cent.

For the last 30 months, Kevin Rudd has flown around Australia talking about health reforms. In the last six weeks, Mr Rudd has continued talking but has not been able to say said exactly when, where or how these reforms will be delivered. Despite this, Blue Mountains residents remain no better informed as to how the government’s so-called health reforms are going to improve local access to services and specialists or how many extra doctors, nurses and aged-care places will be provided under the Rudd Labor government in the Blue Mountains area.

Labor’s health plan will be no different from their bungled BER and insulation programs. State Labor have proven through the absolutely disastrous BER program that they cannot be trusted to wisely spend Commonwealth money on school halls. There are local examples in the Blue Mountains of wasted government money in this program. Quite simply, how can we trust state Labor to spend money for people’s health needs now when they have failed so dismally over the last 15 years in New South Wales alone? Why is the Prime Minister going to trust New South Wales Labor with health money when most New South Wales residents and especially those in the Blue Mountains do not trust state Labor with their health care? The government must come out and explain to Blue Mountains residents how their so-called health reforms are going to improve services to their hospital. I am calling on the government to commit to improving health services access and delivery to the people of the Blue Mountains.