Opinion: Queensland Health exemption unit full of ‘blinkered box tickers’
Queensland Health’s 80-strong exemption unit needs urgent overhaul, currently full of blinkered box tickers who make life or death decisions based off rigid criteria, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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Queensland Health is stacked with blinkered box tickers who are making life and death decisions for people based on a fixed list of criteria instead of common sense and compassion.
The latest case of red tape overruling sound judgment is of a Queensland family denied a home quarantine exemption for their desperately ill baby son.
Instead of allowing them to take up an Angel Flight charity offer to fly the trio to their remote 121ha property to isolate, the Palaszczuk Government is forcing them to split up and quarantine in a Brisbane hotel and hospital.
It’s not as Billy Blacker and Jessie Evans recklessly took their four-month-old son Rocka, who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1, on a holiday in covid-ravaged Sydney.
The infant needed urgent medical treatment and his parents did what any others would do - get help to save their child’s life.
Yet a band of 80 box tickers assigned to Queensland Health’s exemption unit has effectively punished the family.
Ms Palaszczuk, in a shock admission that something is actually wrong with her government, said on Thursday that the department needed to do better.
She said more people would be added to the specialist unit if required.
Premier, we do not need any more of the same.
What we need are people who have been instructed to tap their human side, to realise that some cases are just so obviously fit for an exemption that they never need to make the press.
Jessie Evans joins a shamefully long and growing line of Queenslanders calling on the government to “show a bit of thought and compassion”.
Queensland Health has had ample time to get its act together.
A late-to-the-party apology from the Premier must translate into prompt and purposeful change.
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