6 years ago
INEPT TURNBULL GOVERNMENT DELAYS NATIONAL CANCER SCREENING REGISTER AGAIN
THE HON CATHERINE KING MP
The establishment of a national register to better detect cervical and bowel cancer has been delayed again – with the Turnbull/Telstra partnership continuing to botch the rollout of a potentially lifesaving project.
Today’s Senate Estimates hearing confirmed further delays to both registers for bowel cancer and pap smear results.
The full cervical cancer screening register is now delayed until at least June 2018 – a 12 month delay. The bowel cancer screening register is now delayed until at least 2019 – a two year delay.
What kind of inept and incompetent Government stuffs up the rollout of a life-saving cancer screening register for up to two years?
By their own admissions, the Department themselves said that these delays are putting the lives of Australians at risk:
“The inefficient paper based processes that we have for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Register … mean that, for example, when women move interstate their records and their capacity to be supported and followed up by a screening register can slip through the cracks”. [COMMUNITY AFFAIRS, 28 FEBRUARY 2018]
Only days before the election, Turnbull rushed to hand his big-business mates at Telstra a $220 million contract to manage Australians’ most sensitive health data – despite the fact that the for-profit telco had never managed a register like this.
Labor has been warning about the Government’s handling of this information since the secret contract was exposed - our fears that the Government would stuff this up and put Australia’s established cervical screening programs in jeopardy have proven sadly correct.
The Turnbull/Telstra partnership has cost taxpayers dearly and could even cost lives, and these delays show the frightening consequences of the Turnbull Government putting big business over the health of Australians.