HEALTH — 2021–22 STATE BUDGET
597. Ms L. METTAM to the Premier:
I refer to the Premier's
comment in The West Australian today that his government would not be
pursuing a bid to host the Commonwealth Games in 2026 because it wanted to
retain financial firepower to deal with COVID-19 or any other future crises.
With thousands of elected surgeries cancelled, 119 preventable deaths in our
hospitals and more than 100 code yellows due to a lack of beds in the last
year, why is the Premier stockpiling funds for future crises when the health
system is in crisis now?
Mr M.
McGOWAN replied:
We brought down a state budget last
month that had an additional $1.9 billion in recurrent funding that will
provide an enhanced 332 hospital beds, at
least 500 additional nurses and hundreds of extra doctors. There is also a significant
increase in the number of mental health beds across the system as part of the
state budget, with a massive increase in mental health spend, and then there is
a $3.1 billion spend on important capital works in the health system across Western Australia that will also bring on
additional beds. Per capita, we fund our health system the strongest of any
state in Australia, by a long way actually; we are 18 per cent above the
national average spend per capita on health.
Overwhelmingly, we have an
outstanding health system. It is a system, however, that is under some
considerable pressure, as indeed are all health systems across Australia. The
South Australian Premier has said exactly the same thing, as have the Tasmanian
and the Queensland Premiers. New South Wales and Victoria are obviously dealing
with a COVID outbreak. New South Wales has adopted a model of hospital at home,
so people essentially stay home when they
have COVID, even though they may have, in ordinary circumstances, required a hospital
bed. But our health system is under
pressure for a range of reasons, as we know. Firstly, the decline in private
health insurance. Secondly, Western Australia has a lower number of general
practitioners per capita than any other state in Australia, particularly after
dark and on weekends it is difficult to access a GP. A lot of people are
therefore accessing emergency departments. We have also told a lot of staff to
stay home if they are at all unwell in the COVID environment, so that and a range
of things have added pressure to the health system. There has been a massive
increase in spend, a huge increase in the number of beds and a huge increase in
the services that we are providing all over Western Australia.