Moncrieff Media
Gold Coast Hospital overcrowded? Time for another Rudd review or Roxon report
15 October 2009
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has broken a key election promise to fix Gold Coast Hospital by June 2009, according to a key report out yesterday, says local MP Steven Ciobo.
The Australian Medical Association’s Public Hospital Report Card 2009 has confirmed Gold Coast Hospital as one of the state’s most overworked and overcrowded.
The report follows Queensland Health’s July report on hospital performance which confirmed the Coast’s public hospitals had deteriorated, not improved, in the preceding 18 months.
Mr Ciobo said the AMA findings yet again make a farce of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election promise to “fix” the nation’s hospitals by June 2009.
“The June deadline to ‘fix’ our hospitals has been and gone, and it’s now clear our local public hospitals have actually got worse in the almost two years of the Rudd Labor Government,” Mr Ciobo said.
“Mr Rudd promised to fix public hospitals by mid-2009 or he would seek financial takeover. Based on the latest results from the Gold Coast Hospital, clearly it’s time for a little less conversation and a little more action.”
“But so far all we have seen from the Prime Minister and Health Minister Nicola Roxon are reviews and reports. As with so much of the other Labor Government’s window-dressing, such as Grocery Watch and Fuel Watch, its much-hyped promise to fix hospitals has also failed.”
Mr Ciobo said the Rudd Labor Government was simply pouring good money after bad into the Queensland Labor Government for no real improvement in elective waiting lists.
“And if the situation weren’t bad enough, the AMA Report Card found the State Labor Government has been manipulating figures creating so-called ‘hidden waiting lists’, that is, people waiting to get on waiting lists.”
Mr Ciobo said Labor Government attacks on private health insurance could only add to the problem, forcing more people into public health and so further stretching an already stressed system.