Editorial: Stop the blame game and fix this mess

Rather than blame shifting, the Premier has a responsibility to patients to find out why our hospitals have become less efficient — and fix it.

AUSTRALIA’S free public hospital system is frequently taken for granted.

In other countries, including many wealthy nations, citizens fear getting sick or being involved in an accident because of the crippling impact it can have on a family’s finances.

Yet in Australia our hospital emergency departments are filled with people every day who are receiving vital attention from dedicated health professionals for free.

Our system, however, is not perfect.

At the heart of the problem has always been the funding model.

State governments are responsible for our health system yet their capacity to pay for it is limited by access to new revenue sources.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth has ample ability to raise revenue but has limited direct role in the health care of people.

This issue has been exacerbated in recent years as health costs increase year-on-year at rates well above inflation.

Our two major levels of government have for many years resolved the vertical fiscal imbalance that exists by striking funding deals.

However, this model has and will always expose our health system to grubby games of politics and allow governments to play the blame game when things go awry.

Things have gone awry in the southeast corner over recent days.

On Tuesday every one of the region’s hospitals, except the Queensland Children’s Hospital, was forced to slash essential services to cater for a surge in emergency patients.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday used words like “unprecedented” and “unseasonal” to describe the problem.

Yet she was equally quick to shift the blame on to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Federal Coalition Government.

Ms Palaszczuk claimed 650 hospital beds across Queensland were currently being taken up by aged-care and National Disability Insurance Scheme patients who are the responsibility of the federal sphere.

She blamed the problem also on the Federal Government because patients were ditching private health cover and avoiding GP gap payments.

These are valid concerns.

These concerns exist in every state yet the capacity problems being experienced in southeast Queensland aren’t currently being replicated elsewhere.

What Ms Palaszczuk failed to mention is that her Government has hired more than 16,000 additional full-time equivalent employees within Queensland Health.

That is a 22 per cent increase in four years, well in excess of the state’s population growth over the same period.

An out-of-season spike in flu victims might have caused unexpected demand.

The inability of our hospitals to cope might have been exacerbated by federal factors.

However, it appears our hospital system’s ability to cope with demand has diminished despite the massive amount of money that the Palaszczuk Government has poured into expanding Queensland Health’s workforce.

Rather than blame shifting, Ms Palaszczuk has a responsibility to patients to find out why our hospitals have become less efficient and fix it.

And she needs to do it quickly.

Lives depend on it.

Please explain, Pauline

PAULINE Hanson – laid low by a tick bite – was slow to respond to the controversy created by her charges James Ashby and Steve Dickson.

Hanson’s chief of staff and One Nation’s Queensland leader had deeply embarrassed the party, after they were caught apparently soliciting donations from US gun lobby group the NRA and a wealthy conservative benefactor in an elaborate sting by Al Jazeera.

Hanson tweeted yesterday, calling the two-part report “a hit piece”, and saying she would not react until she had seen part two.

Part two features Senator Hanson herself, apparently promoting the theory that the Port Arthur massacre was some sort of government plot.

“Those shots. They were precision shots,” she tells Rodger Muller, the undercover journalist. “Check the number out. I’ve read a lot and I have read the book on it.”

Senator Hanson now has a lot of explaining to do. And it’s not good enough to just blame Al Jazeera.

Does One Nation want to water down Australia’s gun laws, and does its leader believe in offensive conspiracy theories?