Deputy Premier Steven Miles says Qld health system ready for Covid surge
Deputy Premier Steven Miles’s laughable assertion that our health system is ready for the Covid surge is an attempt to cover up the dreadful state of our hospitals, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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Steven Miles’s latest spouting of nonsense proves one thing: He is in the deputy premier’s job for a reason.
Allow me to defer to a Courier-Mail reader who puts it well: “The Premier worked out long ago that to look good it is important to surround yourself with idiots. She has managed to achieve that but still struggles to appear any better herself.”
Thanks John, for telling it like it is, after reading on Thursday that Dr Miles claims Queensland hospitals are “well prepared” for the inevitable surge in Covid-19 cases once hard borders come down this coming Monday.
Could Dr Miles be any further removed from the truth?
In case you missed what Annastacia Palaszczuk’s sidekick had to say, prepare to be enlightened. Perhaps you might just laugh out loud.
Dr Miles, who served without distinction as health minister for most of last year, said the state had been preparing for a Covid surge since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We have had a long time to prepare for next week – 680 days,” he said.
That much is true.
He then went on to deliver this furphy: “Our hospitals are well prepared, they are always well prepared for whatever comes at them, and in this case, that is a Covid wave.”
Dr Miles said the state’s “fantastic” hospitals would give Queenslanders “the same kind of high-quality care we’re accustomed to as we start to see Covid cases come in”.
We should be deeply concerned.
It is clear Dr Miles and the woman who appointed him are living in La-La Land. It’s either that or a deliberate attempt to cover up the dreadful state of our under-resourced hospitals.
Do Dr Miles and Ms Palaszczuk really think Queenslanders are that stupid?
Barely a week passes without a bungle being revealed, where lives are compromised because of ineptitude, red tape and/or the chronic overwork of too few staff.
Doctors, nurses and those in allied health have been shouting from the rooftops about shortages of beds and staff, the worsening ramping crisis, and the unrealistic expectations on them to be superhuman.
And this, long before the pandemic.
This week, exhausted medics – the people at the coalface and not putting their feet up in One William Street – made yet another plea for the state’s hospitals to be overhauled.
These doctors insist there is no additional capacity to handle Covid surges.
Releasing its Ramping Roundtable Action Plan, the AMAQ said at least 1500 beds were urgently needed.
The plan proposes five key initiatives to improve patient flow and ease bed block, including hiring and training staff to keep acute hospitals “fully functional” seven days a week with extended hours.
It also calls for hospitals to operate at below 90 per cent capacity to make room for surges, and for the government to support alternative ways for patients to access hospital care other than via emergency departments.
AMAQ president Chris Perry urged Queensland Health to act now on the roundtable recommendations.
Dr Perry also said, very ambitiously, that “politics must be put aside and finger pointing and shifting of blame between state and federal funding must stop”.
But Dr Miles – a Doctor of Philosophy and not medicine – can’t help himself.
As part of his ludicrous speech on Thursday, he fired off a cheap and unnecessary shot at Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Dr Miles said the PM tweeting earlier that morning that Queensland had finally hit the 80 per cent vaccination target was the “first thing Scott Morrison has done to help”.
Oh, grow up.
We Queenslanders are sick of all the barbs, including last month’s idiotic accusation by Ms Palaszczuk that the Commonwealth wanted us “to get Covid for Christmas”.
We want, and deserve, quality healthcare.
We want to feel safe in the knowledge that our hospital system can, and will, cope with a Covid wave.
Right now, though, all we can be certain of is that the people in charge are out of touch and out of their depth.
Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
kylie.lang@news.com.au
LOVE
■ Queensland’s new chief health officer’s sensible stance on border bans. Dr John Gerrard says: “We can’t just stop the plan every time a new variant arrives.”
■ Griffith University leading the way in the higher education sector by mandating students and staff be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or undertake regular rapid antigen testing at their own expense.
LOATHE
■ Toowoomba Hospital staff having their cars plastered with flyers calling for the death penalty for anyone who supports the “Covid hoax”. This is not the sort of rubbish you want to encounter after a long shift, or ever.
■ Chinese hackers coming within a whisker of closing down two Queensland power stations that would have affected three million homes.
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