Springborg Must Take Charge

Media Release.

Shadow Health Minister Jo-Ann Miller says every day brings new evidence that the LNP’s mass sackings of nurses and frontline health staff and its $3 billion cuts to health funding threaten to drive Queensland’s health system to collapse.

“It is long past the time for Lawrence Springborg to stop hiding and start addressing problems such as misdiagnosis and the exodus of senior officers from hospitals and regional health services in the wake of the LNP’s savage budget cuts,” Mrs Miller said.

“The resignations of the CEOs of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and the Metro North Hospital and Health Service so soon after the LNP began implementing its health service and budget cuts speak volumes.

“I am constantly hearing reports of talented staff at all levels within the state health system who are seriously considering their future in the wake of Mr Springborg’s attack on jobs, services, and funding through his insistence on $3 billion worth of cuts over four years.”

Mrs Miller said Mr Springborg and the LNP had been in office for less than a year and in that time all they had done was:

•  sack nurses and other frontline staff,

•  sack support staff who help run hospitals and health facilities

•  shut a range of preventive health programs,

•  turf out elderly Queenslanders from state nursing homes, and

•  threaten to close a string of regional hospitals.

“Instead of expanding health services and building new or refurbished hospitals like the former Labor government, the LNP is intent on destroying the very fabric of our health system.”

Mrs Miller said Mr Springborg had had more than 10 months to address issues such as misdiagnosis.

“Mr Springborg has rightly said the health system has to ‘get better at dealing with misdiagnosis’,” she said.

“But he is the Minister and the buck stops with him on this issue, just as he is responsible for the decisions of regional health boards despite his efforts to pretend otherwise.

“Mr Springborg has so far been the Minister for Health Cuts and Closures.

“He now must be the Minister for Health and start taking responsibility for the health system and its performance,” Mrs Miller said.