Roy Heather: General Debate 
Roy Heather: General Debate 
[Volume:621;Page:16812] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 This afternoon I want to talk about hospital waiting lists. It falls upon me as an Opposition spokesperson on health to talk about hospital waiting lists because the Government does not want to and it does not want to for a very good reason. Today there was a question about the first specialist assessment. That is the assessment that we have after our general practitioner refers us for further treatment. We have an assessment and the specialist then tells us whether we qualify for surgery or further treatment. In the House at question time today the Minister of Health finally confessed—after months of my asking her this question—that there are now 110879 people waiting for their first specialist assessment. That figure applies from the end of August 2004 so it is up to date. 
So the question is whether this is a serious matter. The Minister of Health says that it is not. She says: “Oh the figures when we compare them don’t tally up. They were not the same.” But in a press report in 1998 the then Labour health spokesperson Annette King—now Minister of Health—commented on a Health Funding Authority report showing that 96000 patients were waiting for their first assessment. Annette King said that the situation was “criminal”. She did not say that it was bad or of concern or worrying—no! She said that 96000 patients waiting for a first assessment was “criminal”. Yet today over 110000 patients are waiting for that first assessment and suddenly it is not criminal any longer. In her 1998 press report she warned that people would be dying while they waited to have their first assessment. She blamed the previous National Government but today—when her figures are much worse—they are not considered “criminal”. She does not seem concerned that people could be dying while they are on that very same waiting list which now has 14000 more patients on it waiting. 
The Minister’s only answer is that the list is now somehow different. Well it is not. She was happy to comment on a list that was 96000 long then. She did not make any complaint that the figure was wrong in 1998 when she was in Opposition but suddenly today the figure is no longer accurate. In fact today she said that it cannot be relied upon. The 96000 might not have even been at that point; it might have been lower. 
 She also said in her defence that 22000 of those people—only 22000—had been waiting for more than 6 months as if that were good news. I challenge her to ask any one of those 22000 people who have been waiting longer than 6 months for a first specialist assessment whether they think that is good news. I doubt it. Some of those people will be at the Labour Party conference this weekend. They will be sitting there with their osteoarthritis waiting on the hip replacement that some people I am told have been waiting now for 4 years and they will not want to hear the Minister of Health bluff and bluster. They will want to know why they have been waiting so long and why they are not getting the treatment that she claims she is getting to people faster and why the lists are longer now than they were when she was in Opposition and was so critical of them. 
So the comments that Annette King made in 1998 when in Opposition were about first specialist appointment waiting lists which were lower then than they are today. She said in the same press report that these 96000 patients were the “hidden waiting list”; and that is exactly what they are today. We never hear the Minister of Health talking about the first specialist assessment wait. We hear that waiting times have come down. Well we are looking at a tiny portion of a very big list of patients who are waiting most of whom are hidden away from public view and who have no idea how long it is going to take them to be seen. This Minister of Health and this Government need to be held accountable for the fact that there are now more people on this list 5 years down the track than there were in 1998. 
Then we move on to a press report in July 1999 from that same Labour spokesperson on health. She said that 110000 patients were still waiting for their first specialist assessment.