Cape York and Torres Strait residents may need to put a bit of this tape up before the government makes its next boast about how well it’s doing when it comes to remote public health delivery in our part of the world, says editor Lyndon Keane.
If you want to understand how truly delusional the Queensland Government is when it comes to the state of health services across Cape York and the Torres Strait, you only have to look at the headline of its 9 August media release in response to an investigation report into how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this part of the world are treated in the public health system.
“Funding boost to improve health services in the Torres and Cape” screamed the headline, possibly a bit of an oversell considering the financial injection in question is a paltry $1.4 million into an existing $351.75m 2024-25 budget for Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service (TCHHS). For those good with maths, yes, that does represent a funding increase of just 0.4 per cent of the original budget. In fairness to the government though, 0.4 per cent is about the effort it’s putting into fixing a system its own review says is failing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients.
The investigation was ordered after a two-year-old girl died in the Bamaga Hospital in June 2023 from what has been described as a “preventable illness”.
Part A of the investigation report – Part B is expected to be presented by the end of the year – high – provides eight recommendations and highlights a number of areas of concern within the TCHHS public health delivery model, with Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulances Services Shannon Fentiman admitting the government “… can, and must, do better”. That’s certainly the perspective of a growing number of Cape York and Torres Strait mayors, several of whom boycotted the release of the report earlier this month amid vehement criticism of the investigation’s independence and lack of local consultation.
Blame for the current state of healthcare in our backyard cannot be lumped entirely on TCHHS. Whether the report will highlight it or not, some of the remote Indigenous health providers that receive tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding – one alone reported almost $40m in yearly grant-based revenue in a recent annual report – to aid the effective delivery of healthcare in First Nations communities up here have refused accountability, withdrawn services or are holding the government to ransom demanding more money, and must bear a portion of the burden of collective failure.
Healthcare failures up here aren’t new. In June, I was rather scathing in my criticism of the government’s arrogance for suggesting it was perfectly appropriate to expect Lakeland residents to drive almost 80 kilometres for medical help. Barely seven days later, fine print in the 2024-25 state budget revealed the lauded $200m commitment to build a new hospital in Cooktown would be spread out over seven years, with only 4 per cent of that amount to be invested before we are required to lodge our next tax return. Nothing screams a genuine interest in improved remote healthcare like a plan that will take the best part of a decade to deliver desperately needed medical infrastructure.
If the government is prepared to treat Cape York and the Torres Strait with this level of contempt while the resources revenue is rolling in to fund pipedream projects in more heavily populated parts of the state, it’s terrifying to ponder how much the health needs of the region will be ignored in three, four or five decades from now when the mining companies have moved on and turned off the royalties tap.
Don’t be surprised if Premier Steven Miles has a plan afoot to send an expedition of cartographers and surveyors north to make Cape York and the Torres Strait disappear from the map, with the northernmost part of the state suddenly somewhere around Port Douglas. It would certainly free up some money to spend on pork barrelling and the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.
Speaking of which, the government is delivering an Olympic-level performance in political spin when it comes to trying to convince us, especially those in Indigenous communities, it is listening and responding to local feedback, and completely committed to providing a public health service representing even a fraction of what stakeholders in the south-east corner of the state are afforded. It’s like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound and telling us everything’s going to be fine as the colour drains from our face.
