Queensland Health Enquiry - 2005

LETTER TO THE EDITOR - 8 September 2005

The Editor

The Premier is claiming the health enquiry is back on track. Rubbish!

What we have now is just a poor shadow of what Tony Morris QC was doing. The terms of reference have been cut from four pages to only one.

Justice Davies cannot report on a whole range of things - including why Queensland Health has been presenting misleading waiting list figures to the government, why successive Ministers have done nothing to reverse the cannibalisation of our hospital system by over-zealous bureaucrats and why the degradation of our hospital services has accelerated during Beattie's premiership despite the windfall GST revenue flowing into the state.

Nor can he report on why a rogue doctor already exposed in the USA could be recruited to work in a Queensland hospital, or how a bogus psychologist could infiltrate the system and then avoid possible sexual charges by slipping out of the country under the very noses of department boffins.

Beattie's public image bandaid simply cannot address the real problem here. Unless Queensland Health and the government itself are forced to put patients ahead of ideology, and public service ahead of career enhancement, nothing will change. The systemic problems of dishonesty, bullying, intimidation and denial of responsibility will continue to plague our health system and the cover-ups (and deaths) will continue.