Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Madam Speaker, the Greens welcome further investment in the Primary Health sector and have long called for increased investment in this area. Our colleagues in the federal government have long called for an increase to Medicare funding and they have strongly campaigned for an expansion to make health care free and accessible for all people. We have particularly called for Medicare to include dental and mental health. The Greens are fundamentally committed to all Tasmanians having easy accessibility to free medical care at both the primary health care level as well as in our hospitals.
We are deeply concerned at the lack of GPs in Tasmania. The shortages mean that people are having to wait a very long time to see a GP. They are having to wait weeks to get in. When they cannot get in, they need to access our hospitals for care. That is not a healthy situation for us as a state.
We welcome action by either the Liberal government or Labor opposition to advocate on behalf of Tasmanians to the federal government for further funding of primary health care in Tasmania.
It has been very interesting listening to Mr Behrakis and Ms Haddad speak and blame each other for the situation that we are in regarding health care. I would say, looking back over the last decades, we are in this situation because of successive Liberal and Labor governments not taking enough action to invest fully in our healthcare system.
We find ourselves where we are today because of decades of neglect of our health system and the health system is in crisis. Labor has taken insufficient action. They have not agreed to a 50/50 funding model for health. That is leaving Tasmania short changed to the order of tens of millions of dollars. That is millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, that could be invested in our health care in Tasmania and could boost services and ensure people have access to the health care that they need.
Labor has failed to invest enough in GPs and primary health care over long periods. It is pleasing to see more investment now, but the lack of GP availability impacts on our hospitals. People cannot access the care that they need from GPs so they end up in our hospitals. Also, if people are attending GPs with minor ailments but are not able to access their GP, that means that over time, their health situation may deteriorate. Minor symptoms can become major symptoms and can indicate a significant health issue that ends up requiring more treatment and placing more burden on our health system, not to mention the pain and suffering that they go through waiting for the care that they need.
We also have issues with our aged care system not being sufficiently funded. I note that there are calls for a co‑funded establishment of a multidisciplinary mobile aged care team from the AMA, which would include geriatricians, nurse practitioners, Allied Health staff and administrators being accessible for nursing home residents, reducing the frequency and the need for hospital admissions and readmissions.
There are actions that could be being taken by the Labor government that would be assisting our healthcare system in Tasmania. However, it is a bit rich of the Liberals to stand up and demand that the Labor opposition do more to fix aspects of our healthcare system when it is the Liberals who are in government. They are the ones with the responsibility for taking action in terms of our healthcare system and ensuring that the people of Tasmania have access to the care that they need. The government should be advocating and lobbying the federal government themselves and doing their job in speaking up for Tasmanians, calling for more action and funding on their part, rather than telling others to do that. That is surely the purpose and the responsibility of being in government.
As well as advocating for Tasmanians, the Liberal government must take action to address our health crisis more broadly. We are focusing on one aspect of health care here, but better funding of the primary health sector in Tasmania is only one piece of what needs to be done to fix our health system. We need to look at the whole picture of our health system, from preventative health care to discharge, all the way through that process of people getting the health care that they need.
We need to do more in primary health care. We need to take action on ambulances. We need to create better flows through the emergency department and take action across hospitals to help patient flow from admission to discharge, ensuring that systems are in place for patients to receive good post-discharge care as well, meaning that they do not need to return to hospital for further treatment because their post-discharge care is good.
The Greens took a health action plan to the recent election which included 50 actions that we believe would go a long way to addressing the healthcare crisis in Tasmania. I draw your attention to some of those aspects and actions in our plan. We have a plan and a policy of investing in measures to recruit and retain new staff in areas of skill shortage. We know that we have huge skill shortages across the healthcare system, and that it is difficult to recruit and retain staff. We have measures in place that we believe would be helpful to address this, including paying off the university debts of 800 new staff across the next four years in areas of skilled shortage. If we did that in Tasmania, we could go a long way to being able to recruit people and retain them.
In question time the other day, I talked about the situation with ambulance officers working in single-staffed ambulances. If we established a compensation payment for staff who are working in difficult conditions, we could help take some of the pressure off and help our staff to cope with the conditions they are working in, in turn helping them stay longer.
We could train new enrolled nurses and support the existing workforce by funding the ANMF to build a health education and research centre in Launceston. They have been called for this for a long time; they have the land and the plans in place. If we funded that, that would help us to recruit and retain more staff because that would also provide education to existing staff members. If we funded clinical coaches on our wards, nurses would feel better supported and more likely to stay in those situations.
As I mentioned, we could expand Hospital in the Home and evaluation of geriatric patients, and that would help take the pressure off our hospitals as well. Within the emergency department, we could create emergency department navigator positions that help to coordinate patient journeys through the emergency department, making them more efficient and taking pressure off our emergency departments.
We could expand discharge nurse positions so that discharge planning commenced as soon as a patient entered the hospital, and so that nurses were in communication with patients’ families and community services right from the moment a person comes into hospital. This would mean patients are able to leave when they are ready to leave, and are not stuck in hospital waiting for things to be put in place for their discharge.
There are many things in the Greens’ plan for health. We could commit to a seven-day week hospital discharge model. We could ensure that the transit lounges that are in place at the moment are functioning and being used fully. I note last week I attended a briefing with the acting secretary of the health department, Dale Webster, and he indicated that there are steps being taken in these areas that are really encouraging. However, we need to continue to monitor this and ensure that the actions that are being taken work, to take more action as required and to continue investing.
I mentioned preventative health. We could do more in preventative health in funding policies to fund a healthy Tasmania – initiatives that will help people become less likely to become unwell and need our health service.
In summary, the Greens support this motion because it may open doors to positive action by the federal government to boost funding and to support primary health services and urgent care clinics. This will help patients receive quality health care outside of our hospitals, taking pressure off ambulance staff, emergency departments and hospital wards – and ensuring appropriate health care is available for Tasmanians when they need it. However, we call on the government to stop abrogating its responsibility and shifting blame, and to take its duty to fix our health system seriously, with more broad action across the full spectrum of our health system. This is what Tasmanians deserve.
