Qld Budget 2022: AMAQ warns record health spending barely adequate

Queensland’s peak doctors’ body warns the record health expenditure in the State Budget will merely keep pace with inflation.

A record health budget that has promised 2200 new beds over the next six years has been slammed as inadequate by stakeholders grappling Queensland’s health crisis.

The state budget includes a $23.6 billion total spend on the sector, including a $9.8 billion splash directed towards infrastructure construction.

New hospitals in Toowoomba, Coomera and Bundaberg will go ahead, while the expansion of nearly a dozen hospitals across the state will create 2200 new beds from 2024 to 2028.

An accelerated infrastructure program was also unveiled which will reallocate nearly $230 million of existing funding 289 new beds in the next two years across seven projects from Gold Coast to Cairns — but this falls short of the 1500 beds health experts say are needed immediately to ease pressure.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk delivered an impassioned address when she fronted the media on Tuesday, declaring investing in health “was my number one issue and we need to build for the future”.

“This is vital,” she said.

“I said that we will fix the issue and today we announced the biggest infrastructure program that our state has ever seen.”

But the medical peak body said the spend on health was equal to a 5.6 per cent rise on last year, which “is only keeping up with inflation”.

AMAQ president Maria Boulton

Australian Medical Association Queensland president Maria Boulton said the cash splash was welcomed but the Palaszczuk government lacked planning to avoid ambulance ramping and long delays at emergency departments, stressing “we needed that funding yesterday”.

“Over the next year we’re seeing just an increase really to cope with inflation, which is not enough to make up for the neglect that the state system has been in,” she said.

The budget has also allocated funding for nearly 4850 new frontline health staff to be hired by October, 2024, which was branded as inadequate by the powerful United Workers Union.

The union said it was already seeking meetings with Health and Ambulance Minister Yvette D’Ath to discuss budget allocations.

“Until our members are able to take their meal breaks and finish on time, we do not have enough bodies on the ground,” national ambulance co-ordinator Fiona Scalon said. “Government may work the numbers and tell the public this is enough, when on the ground it sees our members not getting their entitlements – access to breaks, an inability to finish on time, and regular excessive shift extensions that can result in a 15-hour shift.”