Taxpayers Foot The Bill For More Misleading Ads

Media Release.

Shadow Health Minister, Jo-Ann Miller, says the Newman Government is continuing its raid on the public purse to fund more misleading advertising campaigns.

“Yet again the Minister for Health Cuts and Closures, Lawrence Springborg, is placing expensive full-page ads in newspapers across the state on Saturday trying to gloss over his campaign of mass sackings, cuts to frontline services, and the privatisation of what are now free public hospital services,” Mrs Miller said.

“The ads will supposedly trumpet the Newman Government’s record on hospital performance but in truth will be telling only part of the story, and that’s simply a misleading way to treat the taxpayers who are paying for the ads."

“Mr Springborg says his taxpayer-funded ads will again highlight the performance of hospital emergency departments, but the ads will not be admitting that all the hard work in that area has been done by the former Labor state government and the federal government."

“Emergency departments have improved their wait times thanks to a joint federal-state initiative funded since 2010-11."

“Through the National Emergency Access Target (NEAT) program Queensland received $60.9 million out of a $300 million pool of federal funds 2010-11 and 2012-13 to improve emergency departments."

“There is more federal funding already in the pipeline if agreed benchmarks for improved waiting times are achieved, but Mr Springborg’s taxpayer-funded ads will not be saying that."

“The fact that extra funding to improve emergency departments was started under the previous Labor government is something Mr Springborg never mentions."

“Maybe it’s because it’s in stark contrast to the $3 billion in funding cuts and sackings he imposed over four years starting from the LNP’s first State Budget in September last year.”

Mrs Miller said Mr Springborg’s taxpayer-funded ads would also not disclose that figures published in June by the Council of Australian Governments show the Newman Government has delivered the nation’s worst result for meeting its elective surgery targets.

“This is not something the Newman Government can blame on the former government. It’s their responsibility because the COAG assessment used waiting times for elective surgery in 2010 as a baseline for comparisons with 2012 results."

“Out of nine targets Queensland under the Newman Government achieved only one in full while other states such as NSW fully achieved seven; Victoria and the Northern Territory achieved six; WA achieved four in full; and SA achieved three.”

The COAG figures show Queensland achieved:

•  only one of three targets for treating patients within clinically recommended times;

• none of three targets for reducing the average waiting time for patients overdue for elective surgery; and

• none of its three targets for reducing the time taken to treat the 10% of patients who had waited the longest for surgery.

In addition the average number of overdue waiting days is worse than in 2010. For example, in 2010 patients needing urgent elective surgery waited an average of 18 days beyond the clinically recommended 30 days. By 2012 that category of patient was waiting 87 days beyond the recommended 30 days.

Queensland is the only state that failed to clear the longest waiting 10% of overdue patients in all categories of elective surgery. NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT managed to clear all categories of these very long wait surgery patients.

“These COAG figures reveal yet another broken promise by the Newman Government,” Mrs Miller said.

“The Premier promised to improve frontline health services but he and Mr Springborg have overseen deterioration in the position they inherited thanks to their preference for sacking doctors, nurses, and other frontline health workers,” Mrs Miller said.