Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Liberal Party, in a combined federal-state fiasco, has overseen the disintegration of health care on the New South Wales Central Coast. No matter what this government says, it cannot walk away from the plain hard facts and figures that are mounting up to a massive community cost that the Liberals continue to inflict with their cuts to the health system. Let me start with the Gosford Hospital in the seat of Robertson, held by the Liberals' Lucy Wicks. What a disaster of her own making she has overseen in the period since she was elected!

Let me be clear at the start of my remarks that I want to commend the heroic acts of care that have endeavoured to meet the needs of the community. Our nurses, doctors and practitioners at the hospital are working under absolutely extraordinary and demanding conditions constructed by the state and federal Liberal governments. Gosford is a growing community and its hospital is under enormous pressure. The evidence is in—31.5 per cent of Gosford Hospital patients waited longer than four hours in the emergency department, where four hours represents the national benchmark for time waiting in EDs. Gosford is one of the state's busiest emergency departments outside of Sydney, with more than 65,000 patients a year visiting the ED. These figures come from the Bureau of Health Information, which is an organisation that publishes independent reports about the performance of the New South Wales public health-care system, and they are damning.

There are now more than 3,200 patients waiting for elective surgery on the Central Coast, with 2,022 of them on the list at Gosford Hospital. The median wait for non-urgent surgery at Gosford Hospital was 278 days and one in 10 patients waited 364 days—that is almost a year. Think of a whole year in your life and imagine that you are in pain and suffering while waiting for a service for that entire year. That is what the member for Robertson is overseeing and helping construct.

As at 31 December 2016 there were 868 patients waiting for ear, nose and throat surgery, 437 patients waiting for orthopaedic surgery and 404 patients waiting for tonsillectomies. You can only imagine the impact this incredibly inappropriate delay in service has on them, their families and their capacity to work. There were 232 patients waiting up to 304 days for a total knee replacement and 228 days for a hip replacement. I see Senator Williams. I know that he had the benefit of a change in his capacity to do what he wants to do with his life because he was able to access surgery when he needed it. These are mainly elderly people.

Senator Canavan interjecting—

He probably had private health insurance—I will just take the interjection from the minister—and he was able to afford to get part of the two-tier services in health that this government is constructing and embedding. More than 400 children are waiting almost 345 days to have their tonsils out.

All of these failures are on the record and they are a revelation of the situation only getting worse under this Liberal government's attack on Medicare through the freeze on rebates for GPs. According to the Bureau of Health Information, 43 per cent of patients who presented at Gosford Hospital's emergency department were known to be in triage levels 4 or 5 categories. They presented with small cuts, earaches and abrasions. These are ailments that can be treated by a GP, but lower levels of bulk-billing by GPs brought on by the Liberals' Medicare freeze mean that patients are forced to resort to visiting emergency departments. They cannot get access to a GP and they cannot afford it. The knock-on pressure that the Liberals' GP rebate freeze is putting on hospitals is writ large in the alarming Bureau of Health Information figures. The Turnbull government continues to make noises about lifting the freeze, which is due to be in place until 1 July 2020. I notice that this government is still not taking responsibility. It has been in for a term and a bit now and it is still not accepting the responsibility of its decision.

Senator Williams interjecting—

All the noise has not translated into positive action for the Central Coast. Even if they are eventually shamed into action, the damage has been done. The small businesses that are our GP surgeries across this country have been terribly damaged by the decision making of this government. Woy Woy peninsula in the Gosford region is in the middle of a GP shortage. It is chronic and it was constructed by Lucy Wicks with her colleagues here in the Liberal Party voting for legislation that has brought about this crisis in health care on the Central Coast. (Time expired)