Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I too want to thank Prof Razay for bringing this motion today. It is an important motion and one that highlights the broad spectrum of healthcare and many of the different factors that are impacting on our health system. Thank you, Prof Razay, for bringing that to our attention today. I want to indicate that the Greens will be supporting this motion.
Speaking to the first point in this motion that we acknowledge that bed blocking is a problem in the healthcare system. I think all of us in this room have talked about how much pressure the health system is under, and we see that right across the health system in this state. I hear stories from people who are having trouble. There are issues in CHaPS (the Child Health and Parenting Service), there are issues in mental health care, there are issues in accessing ambulances on time and people having to wait for ambulances. There are people having to wait lengthy periods in hospital emergency departments. There are people who aren’t getting outpatient appointments within the clinically recommended times that they need them, people waiting for elective surgery for extended lengths of time well beyond the clinically recommended time. The pressure across the health system is everywhere.
When it comes to bed block, though, what we see is that there is a bottleneck in the emergency department. What we see there is that bed block throughout the hospital. The word block indicates, doesn’t it, that it blocks things up, and what we see in the emergency department is long waits for people. I was on the health dashboard today just looking at what’s been happening within the LGH, because that’s the hospital for Bass and I am the member representing Bass. In the last week, 15‑41 per cent of patients were seen within clinically recommended timeframes across each of the categories. That’s on the lowest day, only 15 per cent of patients were seen within the recommended time frame, so we know that there are significant issues in our emergency departments and we know that those issues are caused by many factors and it’s been really pleasing in the conversation today to hear preventative care being focused on and talked about so much. I know that if my colleague, Ms Helen Burnet, was here she would be very keen to speak on preventative health and the importance of that as our spokesperson on that for the Greens. I comment that the Greens have long called for more investment into preventative healthcare. We know that if we’re going to turn our health system around we need to focus on those issues that are affecting people. We know that lifestyle, diet, stress, ageing ‑ the natural effects of ageing on people’s health ‑ all those things are contributing to increasing chronic disease and an increasing burden on the health system.
I add that we know that environmental degradation and pollution, climate change, all those things are worsening across the world, and Tasmania is not immune to that. We know that there are impacts of climate change and pollution on people’s health. The pressures are there and they’re increasing; they’re not going away and that’s why it’s important that we find solutions. The Greens believe that there are solutions to the problem of bed block and to the issues within our hospitals and we’ve heard some of those talked about today.
Earlier, the member for Braddon was talking about the Transfer of Care Delays. The Greens were pivotal in getting the Select Committee on Transfer of Care Delays up and led that committee. That was where many insights were gained into what was happening, problems were identified and recommendations were made. The Greens have also been active in the space of offering solutions and ideas. I have here our Ambulance Ramping, Access, and Flow Plan which we took to the election last year. In this action plan, we had 50 actions that we think would be part of the solution and go a long way to creating solutions to the problems that we have in our health system. And it’s pleasing to see that some of these actions are being implemented by the health department and there have been some moves to address the issue. I thank the minister for the things that she’s shared today about the actions that have been taken. However, we know that there’s much more work to do and many more things that need to change within the health system.
I was going to read out the 50 actions, but I think that would be a little bit tedious and boring for the time here, but I will just highlight a couple. I want to start with the preventative health actions that we had in the plan. They included extending the SmartFood and Move Well Eat Well programs to all public schools, extending the Healthy Tasmania grants program for community‑based preventative health initiatives, and establishing programs for free government‑funded smoking cessation product handouts in GP clinics. I know that there is some work happening in this space, but there’s more that we could do. We could ban the placement of unhealthy food and drinks near checkouts in large retailers. They are so tempting. But there are steps that we could take like that. Introducing a ban on television ads for unhealthy food and drinks during standard viewing hours for children. We know that there are actions that we can take there.
Thinking in broad terms about what we can do to improve the health system, we’ve talked about investing in preventative healthcare and funding that, but I think that also there are steps that can be taken in staffing. I know that one of the issues that is happening within emergency departments and in hospitals more broadly are significant issues with staffing. We know that the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) have constantly been raising the problems that are being experienced on wards, with wards being understaffed, with skill‑mixes not being suitable. There are many junior staff who we need, and we welcome them into our health system, but sometimes they’re making the skill‑mix on wards quite tricky, so the Greens have been calling for clinical coaches on wards and supporting the ANMF’s calls for that; ensuring that we’re skilling up our workforce so that they are able to provide services, provide good care and also ensuring that they are supported, because we need to be keeping the staff that we have. Some of the other policies that the Greens took to the election that would contribute in terms of staffing included increasing the number of community nurses by 30 across the state, funding that, and placing them in a community health centres and district hospitals.
We’ve heard already in this debate about the importance of regional hospitals and district hospitals, and the Greens would like to see district hospitals being utilised more. Their infrastructure needs to be recognised as well, because we understand that around the state there are many ageing healthcare facilities; community health facilities and district hospitals that are in need of upgrades. Improving those buildings and staffing them properly will help to take pressure off our hospitals.
I’d like to draw attention to what we see as the delays in investment in health. We have master plans that are being released, and we have plans for good infrastructure to be built across the state, but often that infrastructure is planned for many years down the track, when the needs that we have are now.
Our concern is that part of the delays is the focus on the stadium. This state is so determined – the government is so determined – to have the stadium happening that they’re putting all their attention and focus into it. We know it is going to cost enormous, inordinate amounts of money to build that stadium. It’s taking our attention, it will send us into enormous debt, and it will mean that other things that need to be happening in our state can’t happen as we try and manage a budget that is spiralling out of control.
I think that this motion is a good motion, in that it recognises the issues and it calls for actions to be taken, but we need to make sure that we’re looking holistically: both at the health of individual people and where we can support them, but also at the health of the state. If we want our state to be healthier, we need to prioritise that over a stadium.
