Ms ROSOL question to MINISTER for HEALTH MENTAL, HEALTH and WELLBEING, Mrs ARCHER
Yesterday in Question Time the Premier confirmed 2500 public service jobs will be cut to pay for the stadium.
Members interjecting.
Ms ROSOL – With the stadium price tag now well over a billion dollars, there will be more job cuts. This has serious implications for our shared electorate of Bass, where services are already struggling to meet the need. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) has repeatedly drawn attention to long-term staff shortages, unsafe skill mixes, patient flow issues and critical overwhelming of capacity in the Launceston General Hospital (LGH) emergency department and, more recently, the acute medical unit. These are long-term problems that have not been addressed. Further cuts will only make things worse. How many jobs will be lost in health services in Bass to pay for a stadium in Hobart?
Mr ABETZ – On a point of order, Speaker –
Dr Woodruff – What is the point of order?
Members interjecting.
Mr ABETZ – I just said ‘on a point of order’. If you had not been so rude and allowed me to speak –
Dr Woodruff – You can’t just stand up and pontificate just because you feel like it.
Members interjecting.
Mr ABETZ – Standing Order 2, if I recall correctly, requires people to be honest in this place and that was a gross misrepresentation by the member for Bass of the Premier’s answer yesterday.
Dr Woodruff – The Leader of Government Business knows that’s not a point of order.
The SPEAKER – Honourable Treasurer, are you going to address the question because Standing Order 2 is not an actual point of order. It requires a substantive debate to raise Standing Order 2.
Mr ABETZ – Speaker, I accept your ruling, but the Hansard will speak for itself. That was a gross misrepresentation and it was beneath the member.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – Thank you, Treasurer. We will ask the Minister for Health to come up.
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for Bass for her question. In relation to the stadium, as we have repeatedly said in here, it’s not a choice over one or the other, but also over the last decade we have demonstrated that we can invest in significant job-creating infrastructure while at the same time invest in record amounts into our health system. That investing in infrastructure creates jobs and adds to our economy with dividends that we can then reinvest back into our health system to help pay for our doctors, nurses and paramedics.
In relation to the rest of your question, I would go to the comments I made yesterday around the meeting I have had with the ANMF and the roundtable with their members on Friday and my commitment to continuing to work with them and listen to their concerns and to continue those conversations by repeating those round tables in both the north-west and the south. I have committed to take away those concerns and to come back to them with some information about how we can continue to work together to improve our health system.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Ms ROSOL – A supplementary question, Speaker?
The SPEAKER – I will hear the supplementary question.
Ms ROSOL – I would like to ask the minister if she can confirm then that there will be no further job cuts in health in Bass, due to budgetary issues in the state?
The SPEAKER – Honourable Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing.
Mrs ARCHER – We have previously made a commitment, and I stand by that commitment, that there will not be frontline service cuts in health.
