Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Western Australia's healthcare system is in crisis, and it has been in crisis since before the pandemic because of the systemic undervaluing of healthcare workers and the under-resourcing of what is literally one of the most important government services. The most recent annual survey of WA healthcare workers paints a bleak picture of the healthcare system and those who are trying to keep it running. Only a quarter of healthcare workers thought their organisation cared about their wellbeing. Feelings of burnout and being overworked are far too common, especially among our nurses. Our community cannot function without nurses, without orderlies, without techs and doctors. Yet these are the people who are feeling the most pressure from a healthcare system that is understaffed and overrun by a global health crisis that continues to this day.

The decision by successive Labor and Liberal governments, both in this place and back in Perth, to pursue ideological cost cutting has had an enormous impact on patients. In the southern suburbs of Perth just one per cent of ED patients are being seen in the recommended triage time frame. In one tragic case we saw a child die of sepsis while waiting to be seen in the emergency room of PCH. People are being forced to attend emergency departments because they simply cannot afford to attend a GP, a dentist, or a specialist to get medical help before it becomes an emergency. These issues are not confined to the provision of care at hospitals. Ambulance ramping, for example, has seen an increase of 800 per cent since 2016. Gutting of the healthcare system during a global pandemic, understaffing and undervaluing of healthcare staff and refusal to give public healthcare workers what they need when they need it are decisions that cost lives; they cost human lives.

It's time we remembered that once upon a time in Australia we were world renowned for public health care and accessible health care. Our system was once world leading. Now most people can't afford a GP visit, can't afford to go to the dentist or specialist, have problems paying for medications and are therefore left with unaffordable options that they have to pursue to get some kind of care outside of an emergency department.

It is not too late to turn this situation around. We can address these issues and make sure our system does not become an American model of health care where only those who can afford it get proper care. The Greens have heard from our community, and we want to build a thriving public healthcare system. To achieve this, we will, and we can together: reinvest the more than $1 billion that is currently paid to private health insurance rebates and to corporations back into the public system; ensure that everyone can get what they need when they need it by funding our hospitals and ensuring that we clear public hospital surgery waiting lists; make telehealth a permanent part of our Medicare system, increasing access to essential care for all; and fund team based health care for people with chronic conditions, improving outcomes and quality of care.

We can make the decisions here at the national level that would enable the reinvestment of some $114 billion into the public healthcare system by legislating for equal funding of hospitals between the Commonwealth and the states and territories, ensuring faster and more-accessible services. And we can pay our nurses, our orderlies, our doctors and our techs—our healthcare workers—what they deserve. It is to them that we turned during the pandemic. It is upon their work that we placed so much. They deserve to be paid properly and fairly for their expertise, for their determination and for their courage in service to our community.